Multiple Themes In Things Fall Apart By Chinua Achebe

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe is a story about personal beliefs and customs, and also a story about conflict. There is struggle between family, culture, and the religion of the Ibo, which is all brought on by a difference in personal beliefs and customs of the Igbo and the British. There are also strong opinions of the main character, Okonkwo. We are then introduced to the views of his village, Umuofia. We see how things fall apart when these beliefs and customs are confronted by those of the white missionaries.

A big theme of Things Fall Apart By Chinua Achebe is Okonkwo’s resist to change. Being a story about culture this affects this characters in multiple ways. The tension between change and tradition often comes down to who the characters are in the community. These changes come in various forms and areas.

In Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo’s “whole life was dominated by his fear, the fear of failure and of weakness” (page 13). Achebe showed Okonkwo’s struggle with fear and strength throughout the novel. He was a great wrestler and warrior, and a great farmer of yams in Umofia. He was a hardworking and motivated man, unlike his father, who Okonkwo thought was lazy. Although the tribe viewed him as a strong and powerful leader, he struggled with inner fear. His life was dominated by fear. He lived in fear of being considered weak, being a failure, and being like his father. Although Okonkwo struggles with inner fear, he is also portrayed as a character with strength because he makes a living, supports his family, and is successful in his job. Chinua Achebe is proposing that strength is being superior to others without having to be violent, having titles, and not allowing fear to stop you from what you want to do.

“Things Fall Apart,” by Chinua Achebe, is a story that takes place during the colonization of africa by European powers, and follows the adult life of Okonkwo. The village that Okonkwo calls home, Umofia, has a rich history and culture. A large part of their culture is how the two sexes are treated differently. Men are much more revered than women. The roles assigned to men and women greatly impacted Umofia’s society because of women’s required subservience, the treatment of women, and the unchangeable tasks assigned to each gender.

Chinua Achebe’s portrayal of the role of women is significant because it disproves the stereotypes of non-western society. In Igbo society, women have many roles both in the household and in the village. “Igbo women [have] rights and freedoms”, such as “cook[ing] for themselves and rais[ing] their own children” (Ohadike xxxii). Because women are tasked with these important duties, women are very important. In Igbo society, sometimes women have more freedom than in other societies (such as western).

Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe, tells the story of a warrior, Okonkwo, who watches as European missionaries slowly tear apart the culture of his village. This story takes place in pre-colonial Nigeria, where Umuofia is divided among nine villages. Okonkwo, the main character, and Obierika are best friends, even though they are polar opposites. Although these two individuals have different personalities and attributes, their culture, beliefs, and traditions are what ultimately brought them together.

In Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, the Igbo’s way of marriage is vaguely defined throughout this universal book. For the Igbo men it is not uncommon to have more than one wife and many mouths to feed. For Igbo women it is normal to not receive a lot of affection, if any at all, from their husbands. Why is this?

In Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, the reader is taken on a journey to a Nigerian tribe, Umuofia, to experience first-hand the struggles of a warrior named Okonkwo. Okonkwo showed that he had so much to live for, but as seen through the story, that quickly changed. Okonkwo was not any old village boy, he didn’t inherit a farm, nor was he from a wealthy family. Okonkwo disliked his father because he never paid his debts and was always looking to borrow money from others in the village. This left Okonkwo in a tough situation. The clash of cultures is one of the most important themes seen in book. After the Christian missionaries arrived in Umuofia, they immediately begin to alter the locals, which was ultimately the

Things fall apart is a classic novel written around the turn of the century, the novel focuses on the protagonist who we can also call a hero, Okonkwo. Okonkwo is a wealthy and respected leader within the Igbo tribe of Umuofia in eastern Nigeria. Strong individual with a passionate belief in all the values and traditions of his people. Chinua Achebe presents Okonkwo as a particular kind of tragic protagonist, a great man who carries the fate of his people. Okonkwo is a man who is inflexible and driven by his Abiding faith to uphold his cultural way of life; yet, he experiences a life of great tragedy. Okonkwo’s life in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart appears tragic according to Aristotle’s definition of tragedy. Okonkwo is a warrior, a wrestler, and a man with personal wealth. Okonkwo has three wives and ban full of yams, so he was able to provide food for his family members. Despite the amount of success and power Okonkwo embodies, he is bound to face tragedy through fear of weakness, the loss of his beloved Ikemefuna, and his decision to commit suicide.

In the novel “Things Fall Apart”, Chinua Achebe teaches us that two cultures are unable to thrive together when they are forcing themselves onto the other through his use of the main protagonist, Okonkwo. This novel, “Things Fall Apart”, is about the African culture of the Ibo people being invaded by western influences in which Okonkwo is trapped within the feud. This book depicts differences between the two colliding cultures, Okonkwo’s culture, and his response to the newly changing environment to present Achebe’s theme.

Chinua Achebe was born in Europe in 1930 during the transitional period of colonialism. He attended the University of Ibadan and later became a professor at two different universities, David and Marianna Fisher University and Brown University. To educate and inform the Nigerian people of the Umuofia village, Achebe wrote the novel Things Fall Apart. He wants to demonstrate that the Umuofia people that they were not primitive prior to the arrival of the Europeans. His purpose is to inform the Umuofias that the Europeans did not create the culture of their villages. To convey his message, Achebe used Okonkwo to be the protagonist of the story and to be a representative of the traditional lifestyle of the Ibo people. In the novel,

In the novel ‘Thing Fall Apart’ by Chinua Achebe Okonkwo is a protagonist. Critics also refer to him as a tragic hero. A tragic hero can be defined as a person who holds a position of power and he chooses his own way of doing things, has a tragic flaw and knows the reasons as to why they go through what they are going through. Okonkwo as depicted in this novel made a lot of decisions, very full aware of the consequences of his actions. Okonkwo was a well-respected man of the Umuofia clan (Bloom 4). He is afraid that he will end up becoming like lazy father Unoka and therefore ends up making a lot of decisions that later lead to his tragic suicide.

“Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness.” Okonkwo’s internal conflict was established early on in this famous novel. Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart” is a novel illustrating the Ibo clan and its culture. This novel follows the protagonist, Okonkwo, through his plight involving British Colonialism and his internal conflict. Chinua Achebe’s character Unoka assisted with the portrayal of the Ibo clan and his son, Okonkwo’s character development through 3 literary devices: character development, plot, and setting.

The North and South Americas were colonized by the Europeans in the fifteenth century, while Africa and Asia became imperialized in the eighteenth century. Colonization is taking full control of each region, establishing a code of behavior for the colonized. With colonization, there is a belief of the Europeans that the native peoples of the land are capable to govern themselves, or profit from any resources, therefore, occupation of Africa began the Europeans are governing for them. Berlin Conference started by Bismarck to divide Africa. The Europeans divided Africa into fifty irregular countries, causing cultural problems between each country. Asians and African were not invited due to that the Europeans felt like they are not needed. The African countries were divided up by the Europeans and almost fully controlled by them. Europeans needed resources from the Africans states. Most of the African and Caribbean colonies served as plantation settlements, growing crops, which contained resources of economic value in the trade market. The setting of Chinua Achebe’s terrific novel takes place in the nineteenth century Nigeria. That being said, the main character, Okonkwo, experiences the dramatic cultural changes of the Igbo’s cultural identity from the precolonial as well as post- colonial era as a result from European colonization. Some, like Okonkwo, furiously rejected to adhere to the new code of behavior of westernizing the Igbo tribe he used to traditionally rule himself.

Things Fall Apart was written by a Nigerian man named Chinua Achebe in 1958, with the intentions of fully exploiting the truth and creating a new perspective about African culture. Seeing as though Achebe lived through the colonization of the Igbo people, he was able to write without stereotyping Africans and European people. Achebe purposefully wrote this novel in English instead of Igbo language because he wanted the perspective shared across Europe to defeat previously construed beliefs of the Nigerian culture and ways of life. Achebe touches on a variety of topics throughout his novel, three of which are how things fell apart through imperialism and colonization, the ideas behind tradition and change, and social construction of patriarchy & masculinities.