African Culture In Things Fall Apart By Chinua Achebe

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Living in a world that frequently shifting everything, holding on to the important stuff can be difficult at time. Preserving something can only prevail if it is still left standing when everything around it has changed. Chinua Achebe, author of Things Fall Apart, relates the very essence of African culture through the tale of a village undergoing significant changes that left its society tainted forever. Achebe growing up in the large village of Ogidi, one of the first centres of Anglican missionary work in Eastern Nigeria, experienced these drawbacks firsthand. He wrote about these adaptations that clansmen had to endure during the British imperialism of Africa. Setting the story up in a village called Umuofia, a lower Nigerian tribe that is part of a consortium of nine connected villages, following one particular clansman’s perspective and life. Okonkwo being a wealthy and respected warrior of Umuofia came across many troublesome events which contributed to his demise. These aspects varied from British missionaries intruding on African tribes, religion being tested, and cultural ideas of the Ibo society being disrupted.
Due to the unexpected arrival of white missionaries in Umuofia, the villagers did not know how to react to the sudden changes that were brought on. New political structures and institutions were foreign concepts and became greatly intriguing to the Ibo people. The missionaries caused immense disturbance among the Ibo society with the intrusion of outsiders into their everyday sacred way of life. Legends, ancestral magic, and gods of the village people were put to the test against the foreigners altering their surroundings and beliefs, “The missionaries had come to Umuofia. They had built their church there, won...

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...imary purpose of writing Things Fall Apart was to educate his readers about the value of his culture as an African. This novel provides an insight of Ibo society right before the white missionaries’ invasion on their land. The invasion of the colonizing force threatens to change almost every aspect of Ibo society; from religion, traditional gender roles and relations, family structure to trade. The missionaries coming to Umuofia disturbed not only everyday life but also key beliefs in the Ibo culture. The missionaries introduced a foreign concept that made the Ibo people intrigued but also guarded and concerned for their own religion. Confusion spread among them about not knowing whether what they were always taught was a lie or the missionaries foreign ideas. Nwoye was a prime example of how some people reacted to the new change as opposed to Okonkwo’s reaction.

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