Why is it that we only listen to one side of the story? The first person or side you listen to, you end up agreeing with. What if the other person was right? In the book, “Things Fall Apart”, there is two sides to the book. The europeans (white people) come in and try to colonize the village. Okonkwo has a terrible thing happen to him when his adopted son is murdered. During the funeral of the adopted son, Okonkwo shoots and kills a little boy, getting exiled to his mothers homeland for seven years. There, he learns about the white people and their religion, which is the end of the Igbo people. The white people jail the Igbo leaders until the village can come up with ransom money. They talk about going to war with the white people, but a court …show more content…
The way the book was written, they don’t give reasoning to the other side.In “Things Fall Apart”, the white people come to the villages simply to seek for the villagers to convert to christianity. Whether that was their actual intention or not, the book makes it seem like the white people came to intentionally destroy the villages with their european colonization. The villagers would always talk about the white people like they are mythical creatures.”And these white men, they say, have no toes.” (Achebe, 59) Not only did the villagers have conflict with the white people, they had conflict with each other inside the village, even within themselves. The village was peaceful and content, everyone followed traditions and everyone was family to each other. When the white people came, the villagers move away from tradition. They go to the new european styles, which is better and new. Since the villagers would go against tradition, the village destructs from within. “The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peacefully 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.” (Achebe, 135) With that quote, we can see that the villagers had conflict with each other and with the white men. The way the quote was written, it is blaming white …show more content…
Not saying that couldn't be true, but the white people could have come over thinking they were trying to help. In, “Things Fall Apart,” the story is written in third person about the villagers, not the white people. Automatically people reading the story are thinking that the white people are bad, but in reality, they could just be trying to help. I'm sure it could just be a misunderstanding. I guess some people could take the book, or even this essay as racist. The book is just showing one side of the story. “So they killed the white man.”(Achebe, 106) If you were to just read that quote, you would think the villagers were bad. Actually reading the book, they say that the white man was going to cause destruction in the village. There's different point of views to religion. You don't truly know who is right, you just have beliefs. You can't ever be sure why people do things in the name of God or Gods. The white people have a point of view that the villagers are sinners for practicing a different religion. “We have been sent by this great God to ask you to leave your wicked ways and false Gods and turn to him so that you may be saved when you die.” (Achebe, 111) With that quote, you can see that the white people's view is that they have falsified Gods. To the villagers the white people are breaking the tradition of their
Often perceived as a group of tyrannical oppressors, the white people have firmly established their gruesome and discriminatory image through the bloody history of its dictatorship over racial minorities. Although it is true to some extent that White people were biased and unjust to other races, it is obvious that the intransigent mindset of the native Indian people have also contributed to the intense enmity between the two races. Harold Cardinal, once president of the Indian Association of Alberta, had inaccurately accused Caucasian Canadians in “The Mystery of the White Man”. He had described White men as a group of bigoted, corrupted rapists and portrayed the Indians as some guiltless victims of the depraved White society mistreated
Chief Seattle challenges the religious argument by stating, “Your God loves your people and hates mine; he folds his strong arms lovingly around the white man … but has forsaken his red children” (paragraph 5). He asks how there can ever be peace between his people and the white man if, in fact, it is only the white man who is loved and protected by the Almighty. He also effectively challenges the white man’s inherent claim to the land by expressing his tribe’s positive reverence for it, “Our dead never forget the beautiful world that gave them being” (paragraph 6). Certainly, his people would be a much better custodian of the land, “Every part of this country is sacred to my people” (paragraph 9).
No one likes to be told how to live. In the book Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, missionaries came to Africa to teach the natives a new way of life, Christianity. The natives had lived one way their entire life, and enacted their beliefs whole-heartedly. European missionaries wanted to convert them from these ways. Each group of people had a difficulties communicating with each other; this caused a type of ignorance towards the other. Joseph Conrad did an adequate job portraying the views of Europeans in his novel Heart of Darkness and why they felt they needed to be in Africa. The traditions and beliefs in these two novels caused a major separation between the natives and whites; could this have caused more damage
1. Page #______ Why do the Mbanta people begin to believe the white man’s religion has great power?
on harmony with all things was shattered by the white mans greed and control of all things.
the responsibilities of an old man as a young boy and had the mind set of
As Yehuda Berg said, “words have energy and power with the ability to help…[and] to harm.” Expanding upon his reflection to see varying social perspectives on American expansionist, colonial and slave society contexts, one notes that officials of European descent including Meriwether Lewis, William Clark and John Eliot converted white words and ideas into literal and figurative terms that they believed Native Americans mutually understood to persuade tribal leaders to adopt white mores. Accordingly, some Native Americans responded to these jabs of white coercion through outright resistance while others re-enacted white behaviors to receive preferential treatment from white leaders and gain social influence that had the potential to undermine white hegemony. Building off of these indigenous efforts to reclaim lost territory, many Southern black slaves adapted to the ongoing tolerance of church ministries and loopholes in slave masters’ restrictions to slightly advance African beliefs atop Christianity and syncretically empower black rituals. While white expansionists engaged in brief, unbalanced negotiations to judge and then exploit Native Americans, certain indigenous people broke out of the ongoing Eurocentric decorum of noble savagery with colonial authorities to pursue sociopolitical agency and many black slaves interbred Christian and African beliefs to fashion their own religious subculture over time. Thus, throughout these cases, both white and non white figures of
White people were portrayed in different ways in “Impressions of an Indian Childhood” and “The Passing of Grandison.” In “Impressions of an Indian Childhood” they were portrayed as evil people who drove the Native Americans from their land. “If the paleface does not take away from us the river we drink.' 'Mother, who is this bad paleface?' I asked. 'My little daughter, he is a sham, - a sickly sham!” (663). It was later explained in more detail what the whites have done. “There is what the paleface has done! Since then your father too has been buried in a hill nearer the rising sun. We were once very happy. But the paleface has stolen our lands and driven us hither. Having defrauded us of our land, the paleface forced us away” (663). You can see that the Native Americans thought of them as horrible people, who killed many of their kind, just for the land they had that the whites wanted.
It’s early in the morning; Aiyana wakes up with the entire disturbance, then she traipses outside her Teepee and catches a glimpse of white men in a group. The white men appeared decent, everyone’s thoughts were lucid and they could not figure who these people were and what they desired. The white group proceeded to Aiyana and she felt petrified, as if she had feeling like no other. “ Where is your leader?” interrogated one of the white men. Aiyana’s father-Azote, who is the leader of their tribe- walked up to the white men. “I’m the leader of this tribe, what is it that you crave?” declared Azote. “We would like to coerce the tribe to our culture,” One white man spoke.
In Things Fall Apart, the church and the missionaries pose a threat and “cut apart” the Igbo culture. The white culture at first threatens Junior and his way of life, but then slowly Junior makes friends with the white culture. The white culture does not necessarily “cut apart” the Indian culture, but it definitely cuts Junior apart from the Indian culture. In Things Fall Apart, the missionaries ways of life intrigue a numerous amount of Igbo people.
The start of the complications between white society and Native society began during the age of colonization when the English settlers viewed tribal people as uncivilized. They thought that hunting animals was barbaric and that the Natives should learn farming and Christianity. They misunderstood the Native Americans. Rather than pitiful, tribes viewed themselves as proud and strong communities with ancient roots and traditions. That wasn’t evident to Eleazar Wheelock, who had a grand vision for the Native Americans: educate them as he would English children, and train them to become missionaries who could spread the word of God to their Native brethren. Much like other colonists in his day, Wheelock thought the Natives would perish lest the
When Orleanna mentions this detail of what her family believed they could do in the Congo, it demonstrates the thought process most Americans and Europeans had whenever they thought of Africa. These people did not recognize that there were already cities, cultures, bureaucracies, and families living in a place that they believed needed salvation because white people who knew of Jesus were not present. It is mesmerizing to me that white people have such a difficulty leaving other people alone when they are not wanted. It as if they believe that a place with no whites is a place for sin and doom. They believe that without white men, the rest of the world cannot keep going on and are in “desperate need” for saving, whether it be spiritually or
The western Ideology came to America when the Europeans crossed over to the new world. Believing they had be instructed with a political and spiritual destiny they came to America thinking that they were spiritually and mentally above others. They rationalized the killings and destruction of the indigenous people. This framing left a ladder of those who were more superior to others based on their position. This frame work led to the development of the Anglo-Saxon myth in America. The separation caused our culture into separate and unequal segregation amongst the population. I believe the denial of racism’s magnitude and impact creates disunity in the body of Christ. We as whites can sometime operate with the assumption that the experience
White men are “like” brothers to the Indians in the sense that just as the great spirit couldn't save it’s nation of red men, god who walked on earth and treated the white men as equals will not save them. They may graciously receive this land but they will graciously lose it as well, it is the cycle which embodies all. All men gain to lose,red or white. There will come a time when the white men are pushed to the side and all but forgotten just as the red men
They clearly made Christianity an entitlement for the privileged Liberian while they disregarded traditional beliefs and practices of the indigenous ethnic groups. Dr. Bizumic affirms that “having a unique religion is an important differential characteristic for many ethnic groups, but even when ethnic groups adopt world religions, such as Christianity, they may adapt them to fit their own ethnic groups” (Bizumic, B. (2015), p. 6). Sociologist William G. Sumner was the first to define the term ethnocentrism. He relates “ethnocentrism as tribal or ethnic group egocentrism: “view of things in which one’s own group is the center of everything, and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it” (Sumner 1906: