Marriage Is A Private Affair Short Story

As Oekeke awoke, he shifted in his bed with a pain coming from his chest. It wasn’t a pain that made you clench up and scream, he knew from that moment something was very wrong. He tried to open his at last, from when he awoke his eyes were still weary but it seemed as though he was stuck in time. His heart pumped faster and his mind was propelling from left to right to across the back and back. All he could think of was his family, but with such confusion he could hardly focus on the realty of his situation. It was a sensation he’d never felt ever before, and as he saw his life flash by him he knew the only thing he could do was to wait it out. The old man finally grasped control of his life covered in sweat and disorientation. He asked

She goes on to speak of his sudden proposal to her, though she was hesitant at first, she ended up accepting the proposal. “We went back and forth until Nnamdi said, in English, “It means love,” and I took the flower….” (Adichie).

For the same reasons mentioned in the last section, Achebe’s approach in his collection of short stories was not different from many of his fellow African writers. The use of irony is prevailing in all the stories. According to the Chinua Achebe Encyclopedia, Achebe’s use of irony in his short stories is a result of the Igbo culture which has been dominated by satire since

Chinua Achebe was educated in the West, though he hails from an African tribe. His exposure to both African and Western thinking gives him a unique perspective on the colonization of Africa, which is argued to be barbaric by some, but beneficial and necessary by others. In “Things Fall Apart,” Achebe perspective comes through as he masterfully describes a pre-colonization African tribe, and how colonization percolated through it. His authentic accounts of the positives and negatives of both tribal society and colonization leave the reader to answer the question of whether imperialism was morally justifiable or not.

In the short story “Saving Sourdi” it shocked me at first to know that some marriages are still arranged here today in America. I had to read the story back because to understand the struggle Nea and her family has from moving from the homeland to America trying to attain the American Dream. Nea’s and her sister had a great relationship while they were growing up but because Sourdi is older and more mature she harsh realities of the world before Nea. Nea is to young to understand such changes in the world because from a young age she was promised happiness but lost hope as she moved from place to place. Having a sister I can relate to Nea anxiously want to drive to her sister house in the middle of the night to make sure she is alright.

Naemeka – young Nigerian man from the Igbo tribe who has moved to the city of Lagos and has fallen in love with Nene. He realizes that his father will not approve of his marriage but he goes ahead and marries the woman he loves.

Chinua Achebe shows the reader the change of Africa as seen by the main character of the novel, Okonkwo. Okonkwo has the hardship of living in an ever-changing society. It is thru Okonkwo that the reader is able to visualize a society of immense cultural standing, and not as European colonizers would say, a society of savages. The main theme of culture is present in all areas of the novel, which helps to show to the reader all of its underlying themes, themes of tradition and themes of religion. Achebe sees the themes of culture, tradition, and religion in one bright light and European colonizers see those same themes in a totally different, somewhat snobbish dim light. However these themes are viewed, one thing is certain, change is on the horizon.

In “Dead Man’s Path,” Chinua Achebe uses character, diction, and setting to illustrate how unwillingness to change never results in a positive outcome. The characters of Obi and Ani are very stubborn in their ways refuse to give in to each other’s beliefs. The stubbornness displayed by each character intensifies the tension between the traditional village and the contemporary school. The conflict in this story highlights a problem that is still deeply rooted in society today, resistance to

On his way home, Nnaemeka is thinking about how he is going to confront his father. The fact that he cares so much about his father’s reaction tells us that he has great respect for his father. We even see that he at one point feels kind of bad for his father, who has put an effort into finding a girl for him. This respect is also reflected in the conversation between Nnaemeka and his father. Nnaemeka finds it hard to tell his father about the situation with Nene, especially because of his father’s lack of understanding of which we see several examples through the text. A very good example is on page 2, line 14, when Nnaemeka wants to talk with his father about “the marriage question” and his father replies “Which marriage question?”. In this quote we see that in the father’s opinion Nnaemeka has no other option than to marry Ugoye, nothing needs to be discussed. Nnaemeka on the other hand, finds it impossible to marry someone that he does not love, but when he tells his father that he does not love Ugoye, he simply answers, “Nobody said you did. Why should you?”(p.2 l.19) at this point his father makes it clear that

There were many women, but they looked on from the fringe like outsiders" (Achebe 87). With the festivals, held in the public places, men presided and took the seats of honor in front. Women were forced to stand at the edges and look on from there because they simply weren't as important. It was the men who held the courts of justice and decided on punishment. Also, throughout the book, Achebe emphasizes the women's role in childbearing and their fault if the children are not born healthy. "Nneka has had four previous pregnancies and childbirths. But each time she had borne twins, and they had been immediately thrown away. Her husband and his family were already becoming highly critical of such a woman and were not unduly perturbed when they found she had fled to join the Christians. It was a good riddance" (Achebe 151). Because Nneka could no longer fulfill her role as a mother in Ibo society, she was no longer respected. She was not valued for her intelligence or her personality. She was valued by whether or not she could produce healthy children. Because she couldn't, she no longer had a place in her society.

What does marriage mean? By definition, marriage is “the legal union of a man and a woman as husband and wife” (Webster’s Dictionary). Most people claim that they want their marriage to last a lifetime. Because over half of all marriages in the United States end in a divorce, most people lack the understanding of what it takes to stay married. I believe that couples should become more aware of the commitment that they are making when they enter into marriage.

Achebe’s image of the African people is depicted extensively in his novel. Achebe gives us a look at life in an African village and what it was like during African colonialism. Tribal life in Nigeria is told from an inside perspective through the life story of a man, Okonkwo.

Marriage matters. If marriage did not matter, would it even be considered when growing up? The common child at some point thinks about getting married and having children. Our society has gone through monumental shifts throughout its history. A theme that has not changed however, marriage, has survived through it all due to its importance. Our children and our health are two of the most important aspects of life. Marriage will help in both of those categories. Children have better relationships with their parents because of marriage. Watching their parents, they grow up having better relationships themselves. Increased success in school has been noted. Families are more financially stable,

When a man wanted to marry a woman, he had to pay the bride price to her relatives if htey accepted him. Each day, the wives had to prepare their own dishes for their husbands and would have to obey them for whatever reason. Although their order might go against the wives' will, they could not question their husbands because it's against the cultural traditions. When a child was born, it belonged to its father and his family instead of the mother's because the man was the head of the family and the wife was always supposed to obey his command. But when a man was in an exile, he  would have to return to his mother's kinsmen until the period of exile was over . Furthermore, when a woman died, she was taken home to burry with her own kinsmen and not with her husband's. Chinua Achebe described these customs clearly in the story because they revealed the distinctness of the Igbo women at that time and these traditions made the story more appealing to the readers.

Marriage is the socially recognized union of two or more people. Selecting a marriage partner is very much a culturally defined process. The rules governing selection vary widely from society to society and are more often complex. How would you go about selecting a mate? Where would you begin? What criteria would you use? When we look around the world to see how other societies deal with these questions, it is clear that the ways of selecting a mate or a marriage partner has been changed from generation to generation.