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)
She must have had the value of several elephant tusks upon her. She was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent; there was something ominous and stately in her deliberate progress (Conrad, III)
Jung referred to the shadow as the "often dangerous…primitive, uncivilized, pre-evolutionary past of the species. The shadow is represented as jealousy and repressed desires like avarice, aspects which most people would prefer not to recognize as part of their being" (Schmuhl & Guches 2003)
The doctrines of the Incarnation, Atonement and Trinity were especially difficult to incorporate, especially the first two that appeared to contradict the spiritual nature of God, as noted by in Things Fall Apart (137) as the "mad logic of the Trinity." Yet, on the other hand, "The white man was also their brother, because they were all sons of God" (Achebe 134)
This could be accomplished in a number of ways including participation in the secret men's society, Mmo. The second level of initiates was responsible for carrying out the funeral ceremonies for the deceased and inducting the departed spirits into the afterworld, so that they would stop causing mischief in the village (Isichei 123)
The Ibo and Christian religions differed in a number of other ways. When the missionaries arrived, one of the natives complained about the clear distinction of the Christian heaven and hell, "For with us there is no very great difference between people -- at least we do not see if there is -- and good and evil seem to us to be more or less very evenly distributed" (Leonard 185-6)
The differences in the Christian religion were not easy for the Ibo to incorporate into their traditional beliefs. The missionaries often wrote about the alternating waves of conversion and "backsliding" (Mair 191)
The society's Achille's heal is that it did not recognize it had to build in a failsafe to combat even stronger outside forces and the ability to meet and adapt to radical change. To emphasize the importance of this impact on the Ibo by the European autocracy, at the end of Things Fall Apart the narrator reveals the sorriest irony of all: the District Commissioner's mental absorption with a book he is writing, which he hopes to title The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger (Rhoads 73)
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
In this way, the historical importance of the novel is paradoxically highlighted by the main character's complete obliviousness to that history, as he is used and then discarded by a clan that only ever warily accepted him in the first place. The first inclination as to Okonkwo's utter disregard for the society in which he finds himself comes when the narrator relates how an old man "was struck, as most people were, by Okonkwo's brusqueness in dealing with less successful men" (Achebe 19)
This led to a great deal of shame in the young Okonkwo. Especially humiliating to Okonkwo was when one of the other children referred to Unoka as agbala, the Umuofia term for both "woman" and "one who has no titles" (Achebe, 13)
All but one of her children dies young. Though it is apparent to any reader familiar with modern genetics that these children suffer from sickle cell disease and that the cause can be traced to both the mother's and the father's genes (Onyemelukwe, 352), Umuofian tradition holds that Ekwefi is being visited repeatedly by an evil child who continues to reincarnate
Yet the value of femininity is not lost on the Umuofia. Even Okonkwo must occasionally acknowledge that "as childbearers, women are pivotal to the literal survival of community and social norms" (Strong-Leek)
It could be inferred here that Jimmie was afraid of the women in his own culture perhaps because his own half-black conscience was guilty or insecure? "When he does sleep with a black woman it is presented as a kind of cultural rape, of her by him," writes critic Allan James Thomas (Senses of Cinema). Anne Hickling-Hudson writes, "The tragedy of Jimmie is that, abused and humiliated by the white world for trying to grasp its icons, he is unable to relate positively to the black world, which, in spite of its faults, is his only support system" (Hickling-Hudson, 1990)
Wehrs, associate professor of English at Auburn University, explains that Okonkwo "beats" his second wife "on a slight pretext" and "impulsively shoots at her when she mocks him." According to Ibo culture, the pride of a man has to be strong as steel, and because of that Okonkwo "cannot acknowledge how much he values his wife, Ekwefi" (Wehrs, 2008)
Margaret Laurence in her book entitled Long Drums and Cannons, Nigerian Dramatists and Novelists states that it was in the 1950's that Nigeria happened to witness a totally new literature, which is based on not only the traditional oral literature of the land, but also on the changing and modern times. (Chinua Achebe: New York State Writer's Institute) And Chinua Achebe was one of the exponents of this form of literature, which combined the old and the new in a pleasing manner
In Things Fall Apart, the author demonstrates how the capitalist money economy made a beginning in Nigeria, by describing the opening of a trading post where yams would be sold. (Rodney, Cabral and Ngugi as Guides to African Postcolonial Literature) In a similar manner, the inter-relationships between Christianity, education and colonial administrative systems is clearly depicted in Things Fall Apart, wherein after getting converted into Christianity, the natives start to renounce their own traditional lifestyle, and this in turn served to advance the cause of colonialism
In Things Fall Apart, Obierika, one of Okonkwo's friends recounts, "They were locusts, it said, and that first man was their harbinger sent to explore the terrain. And so they killed him" (Achebe 50)