Explication Of Theme In The Madman By Chinua Achebe

In different cultures people are commonly told to stick with whatever your people have said. Since, people like to stick with familiar surroundings to feel safe, but in the novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe Nwoye ,one of his characters, changes the way things are viewed with leaving your culture. Nwoye is viewed as a girl throughout the novel, he is “emotional”. The Ibo culture tells him his ways are wrong and that he should act more like a man. The one person that tells him the most is Okonkwo, his father, which at the end kills himself in a “womanish” manner. Nwoye changes the plot in different ways. He changes himself by leaving his culture behind and following a new culture that accepts him.

Thus, it is no surprise that the Christian missionaries captivate Nwoye upon their arrival. As the missionaries sing a hymn, Nwoye reflects that “it was not the mad logic of the Trinity that captivated him. He did not understand it. It was the poetry of the new religion, something felt in the marrow. The hymn about brothers who sat in darkness and in fear seemed to answer a vague and persistent question that haunted his soul—the question of the twins crying in the bush and the question of Ikemefuna who was killed.” (Achebe 147). Nwoye’s reaction to the missionaries’ hymn reflects his hidden love for art that he shares with his grandfather, Unoka, who Okonkwo despises as a lazy degenerate. Nwoye’s passion is entirely incompatible with Okonkwo’s belief that songs are a waste of time and sign of weakness and with Ibo culture, which values aggression and physical prowess, not peacefulness and creativity. The missionaries offer something Nwoye has unknowingly hoped for since childhood: a way to escape this restrictive life. Okonkwo’s violent reaction upon learning that Nwoye has been watching the missionaries is the breaking

Everyone experiences different types of pain and react differently. Mental health is the person’s condition regard to their psychological and emotional well being. “Many...can disrupt your emotional health” creating a variety of emotions such as “sadness or anxiety” (familydoctor). Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe was written to express the painful lives of the people of Umuofia as they are forced to assimilate to a whole new religion brought by the ‘white men”. The language used throughout the story is centered, orderly and gets right to the point without romanticizing anything and reels the reader into the lives of Okonkwo and his clan as they fight for religious freedom. The purity of each village is destroyed as the missionaries came

In the book Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, it carries a very common theme; fear is destructive and can provoke the most daunting actions. Okonkwo and his village went through a bunch of disasters and events because they feared a lot of stuff. Okonkwo was driven to madness by fear and most of his actions were driven by fear.

This is a story of rage and fear mixed with cutting-edge wisdom, self-introspection, and self-destruction. After the death of Ikemefuna, his adopted son, Nwoye, his biological son has taken the way of the invader's religion, abandoning his tribe.

An archetype in literature expresses “a realm of human experience in many myths and fantasy stories” that can go deeper than “any rational or intellectual thinking” (Gillespie). The archetype of the monomyth, or “The Hero’s Journey” first originated from a mythological researcher named Joseph Campbell. The monomyth consists of “several basic stages that almost every hero-quest goes through, no matter what culture the myth is a part of” (Hamby). The Hero’s journey is vaguely apparent in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, which depicts the African clan leader, Okonkwo, as the archetypal hero. Achebe reveals throughout the novel that Okonkwo’s ability to

“Okonkwo’s gun had exploded and a piece of iron had pierced the boy’s heart” (124).

Chinua Achebe author of Things Fall Apart illustrates a change in Nwoye when the white missionaries arrive in their clan. Nwoye grew up in a strict household with an abusive father, but he would soon find his courage and identity in an unlikely place. But Nwoye soon found courage in the missionaries.

The excerpt taken from Chinua Achebe’s Things fall apart comes from the end of the book, where the commissioner finds Okonkwo’s body dangling from a tree. This passage serves as closure for the novel, as the traditions of the past die along with Okonkwo. Achebe uses this specific scene in the novel to express both his views on the inevitable death of Igbo culture in the lower Niger (specifically Umuofia), as well as his perception of the portrayal of its people in western literature. In addition, Achebe continues to use this scene to drive the idea of cultural difference between both the inhabitants of Umuofia, and the missionaries that inhabited the land.

Nwoye was very open and accosted to the coetaneous Western culture. From the beginning, Nwoye was infatuated with the beliefs and concepts of the ‘white men’. However, he still was slightly doubting himself if he should fully engage in the admittance of Christianity. “...Nwoye passed and repassed the little red-earth and thatch building without summoning enough courage to enter.” (112) In the second part of the novel, Nwoye finally sees that he can be his own individual. He discovers that he does not have to live in the world where he was dissatisfied with who he was, and not falter with the idea of being a failure from his father. “He lelt a relief within as the hymn poured into his parched soul.” (110) Nwoye felt the hymn in his soul, which gave him courage to finally have his own eccentricity. During part two of Things Fall Apart, Nwoye finally admits that he is now fully in conjunction with the Western religion and accepts it. When Nwoye subsequently decided to entirely dedicate himself to the ‘white men’s’ religion, it did not come without a price. Okonkwo repudiated his son. He no longer considered Nwoye as his son. “...Nwoye was not worth fighting for. Why, he cried in his heart, should he, Okonkwo, of all people, be cursed with such a son?” (114) Okonkwo was cynical of Nwoye from the inception of the novel, but since Nwoye catenated with the Western religion, it triggered Okonkwo’s lost in all

In the narrative Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe manifests the vision of a tragic hero. He encapsulates this by assimilating diction and mood to typify the comportment of the main character, Okonkwo, after producing his own downfall. The usage of diction and mood assist in portraying all the definitions of a tragic hero.

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." (H. P. Lovecraft) In Chinua Achebe's novel "Things Fall Apart" the theme of fear is constant and persistent. It is shown through a great and respected warrior named Okonkwo. While he is wealthy, with many wives, and some high titles within his clan he is still plagued with his fear. He fears the unknown,

Nwoye’s betrayal in the novel is the same level of betrayal that Achebe is condemned with in his lifetime. African literary theorists who vie for the purity of African literature for African languages defy Achebe as a European traitor, writing his stories with his back turned to his native homeland. Yet this thesis argues for a reevaluation of that criticism. Achebe does not in fact deny his beliefs, his country, or his heritage. He rather aligns himself in a tragically ironic way with the hero of Things Fall Apart. Achebe writes his own struggle with colonialism into the life and death of Okonkwo. It is interesting to note that Achebe’s father was in many ways very similar to Nwoye. His father, Isaiah Achebe, was orphaned early in life and spent most of his childhood with his uncle, Udoh. Udoh was a man of the land; he prided himself on tradition and leadership. Chinua writes in his essay, “My Dad and Me,” that the differences between Isaiah and Udoh were seen early through the eyes of Chinua, a questioning child who was placed in the middle

Achebe’s novel exists not only in English, According to Okpewho it exists in close to sixty languages (ref). This allows diverse readers to experience the novel and what Achebe is trying to show. Things fall apart has an important place in critical as well as cultural discourse because it invested a long and continuing tradition of inquiry into the problematic relations between the West and the nations of the Third World that were once European colonies. One of his decisions to write Things fall Apart in English according to Ookpewho is that he has a certain nostalgia post-colonial climate that framed his life and others that grew up in similar Nigeria small towns and villages. Achebe tells us in “The Novelist as a teacher” that as a writer he wants to educate his readers about the real lives and problems of Africans with the same commitment as physical and social scientists addressing the same issues, this is another reason why Achebe has written things fall apart in English, as somewhat of a teaching tool for his readers to understand

Chinua Achebe has made the book come full circle with the use of Nwoye becoming like both his grandfather and his father, in the sense that Okonkwo hated his father and now Nwoye hates his father. For a couple generations, the son in this family, has set his goals to be different than how their father was but in the end they become more similar to each other. Achebe also uses Nwoye to convey the death of an old civilization in response to a new one. Nwoye represents a new culture that has cast away parts of the old traditions and combined it with a new culture. The culture in Nigeria today is best shown by Nwoye adapting to the British ways and it shows that the Ibo culture is slowly fading in order to make room for a new