Bias Influences the Audience in Chinua Achebe and Ridley Scott's Writing

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Bias Influences the Audience in Chinua Achebe and Ridley Scott's Writing

Chinua Achebe and Ridley Scott reflect different cultural eras and use bias to influence their audience onto their side. Chinua Achebe uses bias towards the Ibo culture that loses in history and that we never saw as being important using biographical and historical stylistic devices. Ridley Scott shows bias towards the American soldiers using historical stylistic devices leaving out how the Somalia's felt during this time. Authors and directors have big influences on people's lives. What they show us and tell us can influence us to like the characters that they portray in their work. This can change the way we think about certain people, cultures, and races. They can make a bad guy in history seem good and a good guy in history seems bad just by telling certain things about them.

The Ibo tribes are interesting and have had a good history outside the fact that they were taken over by the British. The Ibo people were very religious and believed in many gods. They also believed in a thing called chi. "At the most one could say that his chi or personal god was good."(29). The Ibo people believe your chi was like your spirit and could determine whether you had good or bad fortune. Some people may see chi as luck or karma. The Ibo people also viewed masculinity very highly. The men would wrestle each other for respect within the tribe and the males were considered superior to the females in the fact that the males were stronger and tougher. Males in the tribes may also take more than one wife. This is known as bigamy. "There is no civil ordinance law against anyone who takes more than one wife (bigamy) as long as the person can maintain them." This was looked down upon once Christianity came into their culture from the British missionaries. The Ibo have good hospitality and manners. When visitors arrive they present them with a Kola nut to eat and palm wine to drink. An overall view of these people would say that they are good natured people. They had their own language, religion, and ideas on how things worked in life.

Chinua Achebe had a relation to these people in the fact that he had been brought up according to some of the Ibo traditions. His upbringing was multicultural.

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