Things Fall Apart By Chinua Achebe

A form of order and stability are essential for the continued existence of any society. Order and stability are often maintained through religious traditions and societal expectations. Conflicting ideologies however, can lead to a society’s stability being jeopardised. Chinua Achebe’s 1958 novel ‘Things Fall Apart’ explores the concept of societal stability in reference to the West African Ibo society. Through the use of omniscient narration, characterisation, juxtaposition and novel structure, he examines how order can be achieved through religion and societal expectations, and how instability can arise from conflicting ideologies.

In Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe exercises the importance of traditions in an Ibo village of Nigeria. Africa is very well known for their long history, dating back to two million years ago, and their ancient ethnic customs have lived on since (“African History”). Unlike families from a rich white society, African families are usually required to live the traditions that have been survived through many generations, even if they are frowned upon in other parts of the world. However, the colonialists’ arrival in the late 19th century to Umuofia influences African characters of the novel to disobey these gender, religious, and cultural customs.

As a story about a culture on the verge of change, Things Fall Apart deals with how the prospect and reality of change affect various characters. To some extent, Okonkwo’s resistance of cultural change is also due to his fear of losing societal status. Long scorned, these outcasts find in the Christian value system a refuge from the Igbo cultural values that place them below everyone else. The tension about whether change should be privileged over tradition often involves questions of personal status. Okonkwo, for example, resists the new political and religious orders because he feels that they are not manly and that he himself will not be manly if he consents to join or even tolerate them.

The definition of sexism is discrimination on the basis of sex. In many cultures sexism was and still is a controversial topic. In fact, women in America couldn’t even vote until the 1920’s. The abundant masculinity in this novel is not sexism but just how the culture functions. Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart is not sexist towards women; in fact, it shows that women are essential to the Ibo society and posses a great amount of strength.

Arianna Rabago Ms. Ramirez English II- A1 29 April 2015 Argument Essay: Things Fall Apart In sections two and three of the short novel Things Fall Apart, written by Chinua Achebe, the reader is transported back in time and given the opportunity to recount the establishment of Christian missionaries in Ibo society as well as view the impact they had on Umuofia. Chinua Achebe's purpose of writing this novel is to portray the Ibo community as vividly and honestly as possible while demonstrating the intricate customs, rituals, and laws that were followed daily by citizens. With the acceptance of a new religion on the rise, ancient tribal traditions begin to fade into a memory and the morality of the village becomes jeopardized.

Okonkwo. Mr.Brown. These two men are drastically different from one another. But it is only 2 things in this whole wide world that separate them. In the novel, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, the fundamental differences between Okonkwo and Mr. Brown’s core beliefs as to how society should run derives from they’re interpretations of moral religious requirements and culturally accepted or rejected actions when it comes to economy, women’s rights, as well as war and military. That glaring line between their beliefs on those issues is materialism and how present materialism is in their respective religions and cultures.

The belief in African inferiority has existed since at least the 16th century. The 17th and 18th centuries saw European scientists going to great lengths to find scientific proof of the inferiority of Africans, even the theory that Africans were the descendants of apes who raped white women was accepted during the 17th century. Europeans used their belief that Africans were primitive, cultureless subhuman beings to justify the enslavement of what UNESCO estimates to be between 25 and 30 million Africans between the late 17th and early 19th centuries. With the exceptions of Brazil, Puerto Rico and Cuba, slavery in the Western world had been abolished by 1870, yet the belief in African inferiority continued throughout Europe and the United

“The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart” (20.25). Things fall apart, written by Chinua Achebe, is a literary novel that addresses the pre- and post-colonial life of the Igbo people living in Nigeria around the year 1900. Okonkwo, the protagonist in the story, walks the reader through the Igbo customs and way of life until westerns persuade their villagers to convert to their religion and everything falls apart. This twentieth century culture is seen, by some, a group that fell apart because they

The first chapter of ‘All Things Fall Apart” by Chinas Achebe was very interesting. The book started by explaining the setting of the village then it introduced Okonkwo and his achievements as a young man that led him to be very wealthy. What caught my attention was the difference in character between Okonkwo and his father Unoka. In page four it revealed how Okonkwo felt about his father and how he disliked individuals like his father that were unsuccessful and lazy.

In Things Fall Apart, Achebe uses historical context to make the story more realistic and more powerful. In order to completely understand this novel, one must have background knowledge on the history and culture of Africa. Throughout the novel, Achebe refers to cultural traditions many times. For example, when Achebe wrote about the egwugwu and the cultural traditions that accompany them. “One of the greatest crimes a man could commit was to unmask an egwugwu in public, or to say or do anything which might reduce its immortal prestige in the eyes of the uninitiated” (Achebe 3).

A common societal problem is the obsession over masculinity and femininity. Society is confused about what it actually means to be masculine and feminine. In the novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, the protagonist character, Okonkwo, was so obsessed over masculinity that he was willing to sabotage relationships with friends, family and community members to prove his manliness. There are many theories to why societies have problems with masculinity and femininity. Okonkwo’s obsession with masculinity and femininity is deeply rooted in the biology of men and women, the psychological influence of his upbringing, and the Igbo tribe’s cultural.

In the book Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe there are a lot of characteristics that are considered male and female. In the story, which is about a man named Okonkwo. Okonkwo is a Nigerian man , who is a yam farmer, and for no reason wants to be labeled as anything other than manly. See in the Igbo society everything is gendered to male or female even the crops. The yam is consider the king of the crops, so it is no wonder why Okonkwo is a yam farmer. In this book it tells a story about a man who falls to his own destruction, all because he was trying to avoid being looked upon as a man with feelings. In the Igbo culture woman are treated as second class and servants in most cases. Her service is to her man first. The women are only good for the men to use as needed. They are viewed as a males possession. The woman are not allowed to do much of anything. They are responsible for cleaning, cooking, and some farming, when allowed to do so. They are to care for their husbands and their homes first and for most. If a man were to fall short in this area towards a woman, he could be dishonored as a man. You can see here in the text where it says, “No matter how prosperous a man was, if he was unable to rule his women and his children (and especially his women) he was not really a man” (Achebe 45) this how women are thought of as second class citizen. To me this makes for the distinct characteristics of a masculine male and a soft, submissive

People all have different parts of their identity that make them all unique beings, but just what is an identity and how does it affect the culture we live in? Like, each individual finger print each person is born with, we are all a combination of a variety of aspects that are affected and affect the culture one live in. Identity is not just what a person is like, but attitudes of one, that are quintessential of one 's character, and plays a role in various social environments. In this time, in the novel, the missionaries arrival and cultural conflict is occurring, the Nigerian tribes and the missionaries come from worlds apart and the distinct morals and values are failed to be accepted by either side. Okonkwo, the main character in the novel, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, is involved in multiple incidents which reveal his identity and eventually show how he reacts to the invasions of white missionaries. Achebe gives a unique perspective on the cultural and social context to the time in Nigeria, which shows the starkly different image of the indigenous living in the area. Publishing a novel with such a different point of view allowed and informed the audience to see an opposite portrayal of the missionary and Nigerian conflict through the story of Okonkwo and his family. Particularly, in the novel, Okonkwo is the key character that reveals the most about the time, and through this the reader could conclude that his Identity: his power and strength, yet great

Throughout the late 18th century to the beginning of the 20th century, most of Africa faced a number of invasions from the British. Their culture and traditions were altered to meet the goals of Britain. Chinua Achebe’s book, Things Fall Apart, is set in a Nigerian town where the British government had taken over. The main character, Okonkwo, is followed as the story progresses and shows how the new leaders were constantly battling against the indigenous people of the village. The book maps out the change from colonialism to imperialism in Africa during this time period. Although not all of the transitioning was through brute force and exiling, the Africans still had little to no free will in what happened. Their entire way of life was

Chinua Achebe’s postcolonial novel Things Fall Apart was first published in 1958 and narrates the fall of a great Ibo (Nigerian) warrior, Okwonko, after the arrival of white colonialists. Tony Harrison’s Selected Poems was published in 2006 and includes poems taken from his renowned sonnet sequence School of Eloquence, which draw upon Harrison’s own upbringing and pay tribute to the challenges of the British working class. Finally William Golding’s dystopian novel Lord of the Flies, first published in 1954, is about the struggle faced by a group of young boys abandoned on a desert island to retain civilisation and basic humanity. Problems with expression and communication are central in all three texts, and are explored on several levels.