The Use Of Language In Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

Women in the Igbo society are not as respected as men and they are treated badly. In order for the men to prove their power, and look manlier they tend to mistreat their women by beating them. In the novel Okonkwo beats his wife. However, he beats her at a time where he was not allowed to because it was the week of Peace; moreover, he did not care and kept beating her just because she did not cook, and instead went to do her hair. “He walked back to his obi to await Ojiugo’s return. And when she returned he beat her heavily. In his anger he had forgotten that it was the Week of Peace. His first two wives ran out in great alarm pleading with him that it was the sacred week. But Okonkwo was not the man to stop beating somebody half-way through,

Change. Our world is all about change now in days. One phone to the next, one hairstyle to another, or new style of clothes. All we do now is change and go with the flow. But do we have to change. Things Fall Apart is a story all about change. It’s written by Chinua Achebe. I don’t believe that we do and neither did Okonkwo. Okonkwo did what I believe what was right which was stood up for his beliefs.

Chinua Achebe’s novel “Things Fall Apart” chronicles the life of Okonkwo, a strong man whose existence is dominated by fear and anger, and the Ibo tribe, a people deeply rooted in cultural belief and tradition. As events unfold, Okonkwo’s carefully constructed world and the Ibo way of life collapses. The story of Okonkwo’s fall from a respected and feared leader of the Ibo tribe to an outcast who dies in disgrace dramatizes his inability to evolve beyond his personal beliefs, affecting the entire Ibo tribe beyond measure. The “things” that fall apart in Achebe’s novel are Okonkwo’s life – his ambition, dreams, family unity and material wealth – and the Ibo way of life – their beliefs, culture and values.

Words are the most complex, yet simple form of communication between human beings. They form an eternal bond to the future by preserving ideas from the past and present. Just as a picture depicts a specific event, words form sentences that can enlighten that event in greater detail. It is the writer’s responsibility to choose the most appropriate way to organize words into a painting of a stunning sunset or a thesis of scientific theory. The beauty of words is that there is neither a wrong nor correct way to use them. One common way to use words in African culture is in proverbs. These short sayings employ folk tales and everyday occurrences to offer the wisdom necessary to explain crucial rudimentary morals. Chinua Achebe states in his novel, Things Fall Apart, that “…proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.” (7). Interpreting this in such a way so that eating words is a metaphor for gaining knowledge, proverbs act as the fuel, or moving force, of African life.

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.

Introduction Throughout the novel "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe, there are several attributes that lead to the demise of Okonkwo. Often times the result of acting on personal emotional impulses can carry with them negative outcomes. Okonkwo was a noble, appreciated man in the nine villages in which tribes had lived(Achebe 1). The traits that gave him that status are believed to have come through both his fear of failure and desperation to succeed (Achebe 4). Unoka, Okonkwo's father, was unsuccessful in the nine villages which led to Okonkow's lack of respect for him and those who do not work hard in the community (Achebe 1).

In Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo, the protagonist, experiences change from the cultural collision caused by the introduction of Western ideas into the Igbo culture. Okonkwo is the personification of the Igbo cultural values and morals, he is a true warrior, hard-working man that raises a surplus of staple foods, and a holder of many Igbo cultural titles showing proof of his dedication and work. Okonkwo is also one of the Egwugwu, an elder of the village that acts as a host for a god during the Igbo clan’s cultural and judicial meetings. However, no matter how great Okonkwo was, he fell victim to the changes of Western culture as it infiltrated and destroyed his people.

A tragic hero is a character that is both protagonist and antagonist, throughout the action they make. According to Aristotle's definition of tragic hero, he explains a tragic hero as a character that has noble stature and greatness. In Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, depicts Okonkwo as fierce warrior and a respected leader of the Umuofia clan. Even though Okonkwo does not embody noble stature, since he has greatness, fatal flaw, and he recognize his downfall, he meets Aristotle’s concept to a tragic hero to a certain degree. Okonkwo has greatness and occupy a high status position in the village, yet does not have nobility or virtue in his character.

Chinua Achebe develops the theme that women are unjustly secondary to men through the motif of demeaning women and irony in the historical fiction novel, Things Fall Apart. He shows the establishment of white culture in the African tribes in the lower Niger in the late nineteenth century. The story follows Okonkwo, one of Umuofia's leaders and top men, whose emotional turmoil leads to eventual suicide.

When outsiders encounter a culture unlike their own they tend to make misconceptions about that culture. The British see the Igbo culture as dark and gory. Achebe sees it as a fully functioning society. The Nigerian community may seem odd and not functional when in actuality it is functional. For a society to be functional, it must have a culture as well as properties of a civilization. The British judge it as dysfunctional, but this is irrelevant to whether the society truly is or isn’t functional. The Nigerian society fulfills many, if not all, of the properties of a functioning society. Despite the negative stereotyping of the Igbo culture by the British, Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart shows a fully functioning society.

In the novel Things Fall Apart, written by Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe, we are taken on a literary life expedition of a man, named Okonkwo who is a respected warrior in his tribe of Umuofia –a Igbo (formerly known as Ibo not Igbo) tribe of Nigeria-- a hard worker on his farm and any work to be done in general, a husband of three wives and father to many children. Being the son of a man who died, depicted as inwardly womanly, cowardly (fearing blood and fighting) known for loving music and idle talk, also widely in-debt to many, many people, as well as dying as an wretch from a sickness in the "evil forest" out casted with his musical instrument and disease. Okonkwo purposefully takes on opposite characteristics. We see that his mother died when he was very, very young, dying in her own homeland, not in Umuofia.

The main objective of Chinua Achebe in his book Things fall apart (1958) is to depict openly and clearly the culture of the Ibo people of the West Africa (Bloom 49). Contrasting the European views of the Africans such as Conrad 's book titled Heart of Darkness; Achebe depiction narrates involved rituals, customs, and laws and comes up with personal attributes. Chinua Achebe in Things Fall Apart shows the aspects of full functionality and life. Nevertheless, Achebe still upholds his aim and eludes giving the Ibo any unjustified sympathy, selecting some their customs, for example, the compulsory neglecting of infant twin in doubtful circumstance (Bloom 49)

This is portrayed in The River Between through the practise of female genital mutilation. Achebe however focuses on the Igbo traditions of marriage, children, trade, education and warfare. It is this difference of traditions that cause drifts within the tribes, for the African culture is completely different to that of the Colonies, where Christianity was ‘brought’ from.

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.

To start off, Achebe uses proverbs throughout the novel. A proverb is a short saying or story that tells the truth or a piece of advice. In Achebe's case, proverbs are used to tell the traditions and explain the culture of the Igbo tribe. These proverbs tell of traditions, culture and history. For example, a passage in chapter one tells us a story about Unoka and his neighbor Okoye, in which Achebe describes a custom of the Igbo tribe. In the proverb, Okoye brought Unoka a kola nut which is supposed to "bring life" (Achebe, 3). The proverb then goes on to say that "Unoka prayed to their ancestors for life and health, and for protection against their enemies" (Achebe, 3). This