Fear In Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

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Fear is a feeling no one wants to admit they have. A young child, though, will say what they are afraid of, but as one gets older the more they want to be looked as a tough person. Zack Wamp puts it perfectly, no one should be scared or afraid to go into the future, but yet be intrigued into stepping into a new light of knowledge and learning. In Chinua Achebe's book Things Fall Apart he shows the Ibo people and their fear, superstition, response to fear and the British.
Fear affects everyone's life no matter if it is fact or even fiction. When one is fearful of something, that person changes the way of living their life. In one of the first chapters of the book we see that the people of Umuofia are afraid to go outside during the night without moonlight. "Children were warned not to whistle at night for fear of evil spirits."(9) Once that moon, is up it seems that everything should be middling and the people of Umuofia fear of becoming snake dinner escapes their minds. Children have high pitched laughs. What if one of the kids during …show more content…

These Ibo people are already afraid of the British due to them killing the Abame tribe, but now they are coming into their other villages and say that "their buttocks" are going to build some building so they can worship a God they have. To top it off one of the new Christians, Enoch, taunts the egwugwu, or spirits. Even if someone doesn't believe the same as another they should not make fun of their beliefs. Enoch knocks off one of the egwugwu's masks off essentially killing the "spirit". This fear of the British increased, because now one of their own has killed a "spirit" that could possibly enable a curse on them or crop. "Enoch had killed an ancestral spirit, and Umuofia was thrown into confusion."(186) After all this rage against the British has already happened on of the Ibo's own people has caused Umuofia into fear and

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