Things fall apart. It is life things eventually fall apart. Achebe named his book about a man learning from his failures and his punishments becoming a better man because his life is falling apart. Achebe named his book Things Fall Apart which is an allusion to the poem “Second Coming” which is about an end of the world scenario. He used it as an allusion to make a connection between Okonkwo’s life “ending” from his point of view and the second coming end of world scenario of the Christians.
The main reason of naming his book after the poem second coming because of the similarities between the second coming of the christians and the how Okonkwo’s life is falling apart. In both the Achebe's book and the poem are they contain “Mere anarchy is
loosed upon the world.” It is anarchy in the book when half of Mbanta is being converted to christianity Okonkwo thinks it is anarchy. Another similarity is a blood dimmed tide in bothe the book and the poem. The one village in Things fall Apart a village was destroyed if they did not comply to the missionaries to convert to christianity. So Achebe named his book Things Fall Apart because Okonkwo’s life is similar the the poem “Second Coming.” The allusion with the title Things Fall Apart and the poem ‘Second Coming’ are the similarities between them. I believe that the reason because Achebe named his book after the poem “Second Coming” because the poem closely resembles the life Okonkwo and how his life is falling apart.
Do people really change based on their past? We should believe they do. Chinua Achebe, wrote the novel, Things Fall Apart. This novel takes place in an African tribe with a village called Umuofia.The main character, Okonkwo, has a hard childhood. Later in his life he becomes very wealthy and has a big family. Okonkwo makes some big mistakes, but we can believe he learned from them. In the end of the book, Okonkwo kills himself after he kills a Christian missionary. Okonkwo killed the Christian missionary because he was trying to convert the people in his clan, to Christians. Okonkwo was so furious he had to get justice for his clan, so, he decided to kill the Christian missionary. On one hand, we can say Okonkwo was not learning from his mistakes. On the other hand, one can say Okonkwo was learning from his mistakes. We can think Okonkwo did learn from his mistakes because now he cares
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe is a story about personal beliefs and customs, and also a story about conflict. There is struggle between family, culture, and the religion of the Ibo, which is all brought on by a difference in personal beliefs and customs of the Igbo and the British. There are also strong opinions of the main character, Okonkwo. We are then introduced to the views of his village, Umuofia. We see how things fall apart when these beliefs and customs are confronted by those of the white missionaries.
The struggle between custom values and conversion is a universally applied theme to Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. The fable like, tragic tone of the work was set off from the very first page. The verb FALL APART has 4 senses to lose one's emotional or mental composure, go to pieces, break or fall apart into fragments, and to become separated into pieces or fragments. These are all exemplified in the novel Things Fall Apart. Okonkwo is a tragic hero in the traditional sense. His fate was decided for him and was unavoidable. Okonkwo’s inability to act rationally and express his feelings in a anthropological manner leads to his inescapable demise. Okonkwo exhibits the characteristics of a tragic hero not only by encompassing an unexceptional flaw. Okonkwo not only developed this flaw because of his erroneous equivalence of masculinity with being filled with relentless fury, vehemence, and impetuousness, but also because he leads to his own self-annihilation.
In Things Fall Apart, Achebe tries to convey sympathy and sorrow for his own tribe that gets destroyed. They are proud of their culture and are a peaceful tribe. The Ibo’s traditional beliefs relate to practices and systems that we still use today. Achebe is asking, why should what we have worked to hard to create and establish be disrespected and destroyed? The Christians had no right to secretly overthrow the Ibos. The main character, Okonkwo, gives up his own life because he did not want to see what means a great deal to him destroyed, but in the end, Things Fall Apart.
Chinua Achebe’s novel, Things Fall Apart, follows the tragic life of Okonkwo, a man who suffers a miserable fate due to the fear of failure that controls every action he makes. Though the fear of failure acts as motivation to become a successful and respected man at first, it later cripples Okonkwo in such a way that failure ultimately defines his life. Okonkwo is constantly afraid of being a victim of weakness and desperately tries to remain a strong and unyielding man. It is his overwhelming fear of weakness that causes things to fall apart in his life, as his attempts to avoid failure and weakness eventually lead to the ultimate defeat: his shameful suicide. Fear of failure and weakness dominates Okonkwo throughout his life.
Things Fall Apart, a novel by Chinua Achebe, is a story which goes into great depth with its character development. The descriptions of the characters in this book go beyond first impressions and delve deeply into the minds of the people being described by explaining their thoughts and the experiences of their lives. Okonkwo is perhaps the most interesting example of these descriptions throughout the novel. He is a very successful man who is driven by fear and shame. Without fear there can be no courage, but when one does not choose to be truly courageous, fear can overcome them and lead to hopelessness and despair as things begin to fall apart.
Even though it appears that he sides with Africans and their cultural beliefs, Achebe uses things from outside their religion, such as biblical allusions. When the missionaries appear it says, “they were all sons of God. And [they] told them about this new God” (Achebe 126). It is interesting to note that Achebe capitalizes the “g” in God, which is proper especially if one claims to be a Christian. Another allusion could be interpreted when the locusts cover the land. It is phrased, “then quite suddenly a shadow fell on the world, and the sun seemed hidden behind a thick cloud” (49). There were so many, that this “cloud” could easily repre...
In Things Fall Apart, Achebe is able to express this embarkation with his division of the novel into two parts. The first part introduces Okonkwo along with his family’s beliefs and their origins, religions, etc. However, in the second part with the arrival of the Christian missionaries, the seeds of colonialism take root within the Ibo tribe and Okonkwo’s family, particularly in his son Nwoye. At the beginning, the missionaries are calm and peaceful. However, as time goes on they start to undergo their mission and start to denounce the Ibo’s gods as “false gods, gods of wood and stone.” At first, many are appalled and find their preaching laughable, but as they continue to thrive, people such as Nwoye begin to reach out. Because Nwoye is unable to forgive Okonkwo for his betrayal in killing his adopted brother, he converts to Christianity in an attempt to get back at his father for his crime. In addition, the missionaries’ hymn about brothers living in “darkness and fear,...
The novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe is a story that opens the reader's mind to an entirely different way of living in a Nigerian village. Achebe was born in Nigeria in 1930, perhaps this is why he writes a whole book on a Nigerian village and introduces to us the ways of life for the Nigerian people. From the first page of the book to the last, Achebe allows the reader to enter the mind of the main character Okonkwo. Okonkwo is the leader of his village and is very respected for his many achievements. Although Okonkwo means well for his village, the novel invites the reader to see him has a flawed character who eventually suffers from the consequences of bad "masculine" decisions he makes throughout the book.
Chinua Achebe’s book, Things Fall Apart, is a story about a society on the verge of a cultural change. The main character, Okonkwo, is driven throughout the story by fear and a drive for success. He relied on the village of Umuofia to stay the same because he used the structured culture to feel safe and appreciated. He lives in a constant state of fear because he wants to find his own meaning in life. When the structure of Umuofia began to change, Okonkwo found himself incapable of adapting like the rest of the villagers. He was determined to live a life that could not survive the changing world, and his dreams crumbled down. Throughout the novel, Achebe demonstrates that the lack of being able to adapt to change will leave you lost in society.
Another coinciding idea in both pieces is the sacrifice of something to avoid changes that come along . Okonkwo ends his life as a last resort . In doing this he feels that he saves his honor and heritage . He also kills himself to dodge the pain and suffering that Christianity brought to his culture . “The Second Coming” warns us of an apocolypse . The apocolypse is the end of civilization in our world . What makes the poem so synonymous to the book is that in either case it is not possible to stop the changes from happening .
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe is a novel written to highlight the intriguing lives and misconceptions that are often identified with African culture. Achebe writes Things Fall Apart from the African view, a foreign perspective that sees westerners as the outsiders and Africans as the insiders. Focusing on a clan in lower Nigeria, Achebe profiles the clash of cultures that erupts when white Christians colonize and spread their religious ideals. Achebe is able to make his book so popular to the entire world because of his expert use of symbols like drums, locusts, and fire. These common symbols in which drums represent the beat of all civilization, locusts represent invasion by an outsider, and fire represents destruction, all aid Things Fall Apart in making it a novel for the ages that applies to all humanity. Achebe accomplished this by frequently using drums, locusts and fire to better outline loss of culture, the white men coming, and the destructive societal ramifications that follow.
Achebe himself once said, "Language is a weapon and we use it, and there's no point in fighting it." ( Gallagher, The Christian Century, v114, 260) These are words that Achebe lives by. He stood by this statement throughout his entire career with a language style that would change African literature. was no exception. He accomplished his goal by writing about his own culture and his own family in a poetic, proverbic style. < qtd. in http://www.upress.state.ms.us/catalogs/books/c/html/conache.html > The unique language style of Things Fall Apart not only changed Achebe's career, but it also changed his country. Achebe himself once said, " Art is, and always was, at the service of man. Our ancestors created their myths and told their stories for a human purpose. Any good story, any good novel, should have a message, should have a purpose." < http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/achebe.html> Achebe used the "weapon" of language to convince "outsiders" that Nigeria is a nation with great potential.
Chinua Achebe's novel, Things Fall Apart, uses the changes in African tribal culture brought about by European colonization to illustrate the evolution of the character Okonkwo. As Okonkwo leads his life, his experiences, personality and thought are revealed to the reader. The obstacles he faces in life are made numerous as time progresses. Okonkwo's most significant challenge originates within himself. He also encounters problems not only when in opposition to the white culture, but in his own culture, as he becomes frustrated with tribal ideals that conflict with his own. The last adversary he encounters is of the physical world, brought upon himself by his emotional and cultural problems. The manner through which Okonkwo addresses his adversaries in Things Fall Apart creates the mechanism that leads to his eventual destruction.
By the sound of the title, Things Fall Apart, one can conclude that the ending will literally fall apart. In this book about a respected leader, in the Umuofia tribe of the Igbo people, named Okonkwo, attempts to be his father’s opposite. Through many events that occurred, such as murdering his adopted son and getting exiled to his mother’s home, Mbanta, Okonkwo slowly leads to his downfall of killing himself. The traditional African values, traditions and culture tumble to the edge because of Western culture, traditions, and religion and relates to the Poem “The Second Coming” because this poem describes the downfall of the old and traditional ways of culture just like with Okonkwo. At the end, Okonkwo hangs himself because his clan would not go to war against the white men. This was a tragic ending, but is his downfall the only reason and motivator to name the book “Things Fall Apart”? Where did Achebe get his inspiration for naming his book? The author chose the title Things Fall Apart because of the poem written by William Butler Yeat, called “The Second Coming.” The second com...