Throughout the story, it is clear the Ibo live and love the natural world, and Achebe uses metaphors to show their closeness to the land: "Let the kite perch and let the eagle perch too. If one says no to the other, let his wing break" (Achebe 21-22)
McLeish states that the civilized Christians are a "cancer, and as they thrive they kill their host" (McLeish). We read that when they send missionaries to other villages, we read that it was a "source of great sorrow to the leaders of the clan" (Achebe Things Fall Apart 143)
Jonathon is to be admired because he has survived the war and he is simply happy that he has his wife and children. Rena Korb notes that the story "captures a spirit of optimism" (Korb)
Rena Korb notes that the story "captures a spirit of optimism" (Korb). Susan Sanderson agrees with this idea and observes that the story also "teaches its readers about survival and about the merits of a never-say-die attitude" (Sanderson)
In Okonkwo's family, the first view is represented by his father, Unoka, who has made a failure of his life (Chun). Similarly, his son by his first wife, Nwoye, reminds Okonkwo of his father's weakness, and is therefore described as "effeminate" (Achebe 143)
Conversely, if a woman shows herself to be strong and capable, she is likened to a man. In Okonkwo's family, the first view is represented by his father, Unoka, who has made a failure of his life (Chun)
Most male readers are probable to express little interest in Ekwefi's character as a consequence of the fact that the text tends to limit her stature in the overall story. "The characterization of Ekwefi, Okonkwo's second wife, almost seems insignificant to one reading from a patriarchal standpoint, but when reevaluated, one will find that she is a well of knowledge, love, and fierce independence" (Strong-Leek)
Even with the fact that it does not initially seem this way, "Things Fall Apart" has been partly written with the purpose of changing the general public's opinion concerning African history. The novel "has also proved to be an immensely influential work for African writers, becoming the progenitor of a whole movement in fiction, drama, and poetry that focuses on the reevaluation of traditional African cultures and the representation of culture conflicts that had their genesis in the colonial era" (Whittaker & Msiska ix)
He does not like being told what to do and he also has his pride. For example, he justified killing Ikemefuna because "he was afraid of being thought weak" (Achebe 61)
But by page 3 Begam is ready to paint a picture of Okonkwo that is not so perfect and brave. After all, according to Aristotelian history, any hero also has flaws, and certainly Okonkwo has his flaws: to wit, "…whenever he was angry and could not get his words out quickly enough, he would use his fists" (Achebe, p
I was disturbed very seriously," the author replied. A "healthy culture" will survive this kind of foreign and cultural intervention, he continued, but it will not survive "exactly in the form in which it was met by the invading culture" (Anyadike, 2007, p
Richard Begam -- History and Tragedy in Things Fall Apart In his scholarly piece in the journal Contemporary Literary Criticism, Begam discusses culture in the context of the postcolonial dynamics four years after the Nigerian independence, by quoting the author Achebe from four years after the independence movement had succeeded. "African people did not hear of culture for the first time from Europeans," Achebe explained; "…their societies were not mindless but frequently had a philosophy of great depth and value and beauty" (Begam, 1997, p
Begam makes that point because the messenger sent and killed was not a European; he was a fellow Igbo. Possibilities and Pitfalls of Ethnographic Readings -- Carey Snyder Carey Snyder writes about the 25th and final chapter in the novel -- in which Okonkwo hangs himself -- commenting that the final chapter represents "a dramatic shift of perspective" (Snyder, 2008, p
As to the relationship between Okonkwo and Ekwefi, she was a gorgeous young woman and he wanted her but the problem was he didn't have the resources to pay the price her father was asking. That said, a few years later she walked out on her husband and joined Okonkwo's group of wives (Wehrs)
Neither of them succeeded in converting the other but they learned more about their different beliefs." (Achebe 126) Later in the same line of thought Brown and Akunna discuss the nature of god, with Brown attesting to there being only one god, while Akunna contends there is a supreme god but that he is to busy to do everything and hear everything so the right thing is to seek out his lesser gods to help resolve human need and conflict
Religion in Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart is centrally focused on religion, and the varied ways it can be interpreted and how those interpretations can be acted upon. (MacKenzie 128) Secondary to the Igbo religion, which plays an important role in the everyday lives of African's is the contrasting Christian faith of the missionaries that predate colonial interests
He uses this metaphor of the kite and the eagle to illustrate how everyone should try to get along with each other: "Let the kite perch and let the eagle perch too. If one says no to the other, let his wing break" (Achebe 21-22)
They are happy, but their happiness, just as their way of life, will not last forever, however, their images and memories will. Whitman uses a lovely and clearly defined form of imagery in his writings on nature, as this stanza from "Tintern Abbey" visibly shows: These beauteous forms, Through a long absence, have not been to me As is a landscape to a blind man's eye: (Wordsworth)
When Okonkwo chooses his own sense of masculinity over the child Ikemefuna, causing the child's brutal murder, the reader comes into close contact with the dichotomies of Igbo life. The novel reveals the "shifts of belief…marked by the pragmatic transference of old pieties for new, a metamorphosis demanded by the realities of a revised socio-economic hierarchy," (MacKenzie, 1996, p
¶ … Things Fall Apart repudiates imperialist and colonialist ideology almost goes without saying and is one of the primary underlying purposes and themes of the novel (Osei-Nyame, 1999, p