The Collision Of Cultures : Chinua Achebe 's Things Fall Apart

He is one of the most respected men in the village, “Age was respected among his people, but achievement was revered” (Achebe 17). As a young man, Okonkwo had accomplished more than most of the eldest people in his village. He was used to being the best, and most feared in all the land, qualities in which he took great pride. However, this mentality eventually led to his downfall. “’When did you become a shivering old woman,’ Okonkwo asked himself, ‘you, who are known in all the nine villages for your valor in war?

“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” These are the words of Socrates on change and the human energy it may take to embrace it. One culture that experienced significant change was the Ibo culture and its people. The novel Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe, clearly demonstrates the changes that took place in the Ibo culture to a Western audience. By following the life of many dynamic characters throughout the story, Achebe is able show the reader what the Ibo culture entails. Characters play a dominating role in Chinua Achebe’s novel by displaying how one must change in order to survive in the evolving world.

Throughout Chinua Achebe’s, Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo portrays a more austere type of person, only wanting to succeed in life to not become a failure like his father, Unoka. Achebe shows that Okonkwo cares for Ezinma most when he follows her to the cave. However, Okonkwo will never quite accept her fully because she is a woman.

In “Things Fall Apart,” CHinua Achebe describes the life of Okonkwo, a village leader, and displays how the altering world around him affects his decisions. In order to do this, he first had to establish the things that were tradition so that he could show was being altered. Achebe’s use of literary items assists in revealing their traditions and it challenges.

Another form of political resistance is through the characters in Achebe’s Things fall Apart. The character’s use their bodies and morals to rise against oppression. What the characters do is isolate difference or let, “Umuofia…decided to kill him… [in fear] of being thought weak” (Achebe, 1986, pp. 40-43). Through the physical act of death the end is inevitable and while the Africans decide to act upon it, the colonization is what refrains the movement of the town. There is a clash of cultural conflict because of the way societies deal with political situations. Resulting in separation in Okonkwo’s morals, especially when, “All was silent… Okonkwo’s gun had exploded and a piece pf iron… [In] the…heart… [Forced] to flee.” (Achebe, 1986,

In the Igbo society, it was important that a man portray very masculine qualities. So much so, that throughout the story of Okonkwo, Achebe emphasizes the heroic accomplishments of Okonkwo and the traditional cultural values in which he lives by. In the spiritual system of the Igbo people is the concept of “chi”. Similar to ones “Ora”, it is believed that everyone and everything has chi; a fundamental force of creation (John, 2016). Okonkwo believed that a man’s chi coincided with a man saying yes to greatness (Beckman, 2002). Okonkwo possessed what he believed to be good chi, he possessed all the qualities of hero. The narrator describes Okonkwo as a tall man with a

Chinua Achebe’s world-renowned work, Things Fall Apart, centers around a Nigerian tribe which becomes the subject of conversion to Christianity via missionaries. During the course of this novel, we follow the central character, Okonkwo, through times of stability and times of change in his homeland to arrive at the cathartic ending of his suicide. Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory, however, centers around an unnamed whiskey priest, who is on the run from the authorities in Mexico, where religion has been outlawed. Over the course of this novel, the struggle between church and state is illustrated as well as the conflicting perspectives of the people both are trying to

Since Okonkwo was the leader of his community, he took care of Ikemefuna. Ikemefuna was a lost child from the other tribe. Okonwo and Ikemefuna were deeply close and called each other father and son. Moreover, Nwoye and Ikemefuna were best friends and considered themselves family.

In 1958, Chinua Achebe a famous Nigerian author publishes one of his most famous novels Things Fall Apart. The novel takes place in a Nigerian village called Umuofia. During the time that this novel is published Nigeria is being criticized by the Europeans for being uncivilized. In response, Achebe uses his brilliance in this novel to express the valued history of his people to his audience. His focus in the novel is on the pre-colonized people of the Igbo tribe and their tribal leader Okonkwo. Achebe discuses early in the novel that the tribe is outlined by many rituals and values that they follow religiously. However, when the well-respected leader Okonkwo mistakenly

The President of the United States, Barack Obama, once said “The worst thing that colonialism did was to cloud our view of our past.” The thoughts that President Obama was trying to portray is the loss of true customs and values that many humans were deprived of when imperialism was in placed. Colonialism brought upon so much of a change, that it is impossible to see true heritage in its original form. In the novel Things Fall Apart, this change is very well seen. Written by Chinua Achebe whom was first born in Nigeria in 1930 to parents who believe strongly in Christianity, who belief were changed after their nation was colonized. Fortunately, he was able to experience the customs of his native people from ages ago with the help of his grandparents who firmly did not believe in colonialism and what they had to offer. When the renowned novel, Things Fall Apart, was written, it was written in response to thoughts of Europeans who previously wrote on point of views of Africa and Africans (Chinua Achebe Bio). This novel in particular is centered on the life of Okonkwo. Okonkwo was known for having several wives, having a successful harvest, and his victory against one of the strongest wrestlers in the village. As the novel continues, Okonkwo is exile from his village because of an accidental death of a man. While he is gone, white missionaries arrive in his village of Umuofia and attempts to colonize the village (Achebe). In retrospect, such cultures in Nigeria, had a rich

As machines roared and prices soared throughout industrial Europe, one continent turned with greedy eyes to lands outside their borders, hungry for greater resources to fuel their ever-growing factories. Armies poured forth and spread out all across the globe, trampling those in their path. Here we see a common story; the colonizer bulldozing over the colonized with little care, however times have changed, and the colonized have been granted a new voice, in the form of postcolonial literature, of which one star shines especially bright: Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. Throughout this story we follow Okonkwo, a man whose life we watch get torn to shreds by colonization. Such stories provide a new and unique perspective on colonization, and create a new channel of information through which postcolonial writers can express their resentment of colonialism, which is often expressed through their interpretations of colonial discourse, valorization of cultural identity, and in rewriting history. Things Fall Apart exemplifies these three aspects in spades, such that even now, so many years later, we as the reader can still understand how terrible an event colonialism really was.

Chinua Achebe is a famous Nigerian novelist in worldwide. Things fall apart is Chinua Achebe’s first novel published in 1958, the year after Ghana became the first African nation to gain independence. And this novel is one of the first African novels to gain worldwide recognition. (Phil Mongredien, 2010) This novel presents people a story of an African Igbo tribal hero, Okonkwo, from his growth to death. The fate of Okonkwo also indicates the fate of Africa caused by the colonization from Europe. Chinua Achebe devoted a large segment of this novel to describe Igbo’s traditions, and because he grew up in a missionary teachers’ family, this novel focuses on the conflicts between Igbo’s traditional customs and Christianity instead of weapons and wars, and show how religion separate and destroy the clan. After reading this novel, the most impressive thing I would like to talk about is the reasons of why the tribe had fallen apart.

Prior to colonization, Okonkwo was held in very high esteem in the Igbo community and many of his successes were linked to the Igbo culture and its customs. Much like football or basketball here in America, the famed sport of Igbo Land was wrestling, and people such as Okonkwo were acclaimed by the public for participating and demonstrating great feats of strength in the sport. In fact, the author immediately introduces Okonkwo by talking about how “Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond… As a young man of eighteen he had brought honor to his village by throwing Amalinze the Cat. Amalinze was the great wrestler who for seven years was unbeaten, from Umuofia to Mbaino… It was this man that Okonkwo

Postcolonial literature was written during the time period when European countries began colonizing Africa on the premise that the Africans were savages and needed help to become more civilized. The Europeans believed that they would achieve this by setting up governments similar to their own, ignoring the ones the African tribes already had set up, and forcefully converting them to Christianity, much to the Africans dismay. In response, the Africans could not do much to dispel the white people from their lands, so some wrote postcolonial literature to display their grievances against the whites. Chinua Achebe’s, Things Fall Apart, is a great example. Within this postcolonial literature there are numerous reasons as to why it is so, like decolonization struggles, appropriation of colonial language, and colonization.

Introduced by the story of a young man’s troubles and accomplishments by mere fighting, Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, from its first few paragraphs, begins to tell the story of a tribe in Africa right before its colonization. A lyrical story of the struggles and societal reality centered around a flawed man, Achebe attempts to make Africa human in a world were mostly limited and dehumanized European perspectives on African lives existed. A story about culture, characters, and perspectives that are not perfect, he perfectly produces a novel about the human and real side of colonialism. Things Fall Apart is about moral and immoral characters, the consequences of childhood trauma, the power of nostalgia, the constant shifting of beliefs and, most importantly, the everyday aspects of mere human existence.