Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

Cultures around the world have been clashing since the dawn of time. The Huns invading China, the Crusades against Islam, and the Age of Exploration all involve the meeting and eventually collision between two cultures. The people caught in between the new culture and their own are often called into conflict. What the people do when called to conflict defines who they are and what they believe. In the book Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo is caught in between British culture and his own; the more the British took hold of the Ibo way of life, the more Okonkwo fought back and resented them. When the British first arrived, and the culture clash began, Okonkwo did not openly wish for everything British to be eradicated from the Ibo society. The British

Much to Okonkwo’s dismay, Umuofia had been more influenced by the Christians than Mbanta. A larger church had been built and some of the more important men in the clan had decided to convert. He was shocked by what he saw. Time after time Okonkwo saw how the British had invaded the Ibo culture and replaced it with something from their own. Each time he saw something new, his hate for the British grew. The last straw for Okonkwo was being captured and humiliated by the District Commissioner and the court messengers. Okonkwo urged the clan to fight for their culture and push back against the British. Okonkwo even led the way by killing one of the messengers. “In a flash Okonkwo drew his machete…[it]descended twice and the man's head lay beside his uniformed body. The waiting backcloth jumped into tumultuous life and the meeting stopped...He knew Umuofia would not go to war” (Achebe 204-205). The death of the messenger was supposed to awaken a sense of the old Ibo ways within the people. Umuofia was supposed to kill all of the converts and the British while being led by Okonkwo. After ridding themselves of the British, everything would go back to normal. The people of Umuofia did not attack the British, however, and it was at that point that Okonkwo had reached his greatest hatred of the British and their culture. The British had taken everything from

By fighting for his culture while it was threatened, Okonkwo was protecting the only thing he had, his reputation. When the Christians first came to Mbanta, Okonkwo simply had to finish his exile and then go back to being a well respected member of the community. THe christian had no influence at this point in the story. As the Christians committed acts against the Ibo culture, they also committed acts against Okonkwo’s legacy. Nobody would be there to remember Okonkwo if everyone converted to Christianity. The more Christianity threatened his memory, the more Okonkwo fought the idea of the new religion. When he went back to his fatherland Okonkwo had fostered so much hate for the British that he killed one in an attempt to get his village to fight the war on the Ibo culture. Okonkwo spent the most of the book building his reputation, only to be remembered by a paragraph in a book and in the distant memories of his