The Ibo people have a strict set of values, beliefs, and spiritual practices. The Ibo religion is polytheistic and believes in gods and goddesses. "The Ibo people are polytheistic (worshipping many Gods) usually in the form of wood and stone" (Kucharski 3). The Ibo religion has many ways of worshipping different things and people. They also believe in many spiritual possessions like the evil forest, the masked men who are called egwugwu, and the belief of obanje. In the novel Things Fall Apart the Ibo people take their religion extremely seriously. In Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, Ibo religion plays a huge role in the book and guides many peoples lives throughout the novel. The Ibo religion believes in many things spiritually and religiously. …show more content…
Spirits and evil are two common aspects of Ibo religion. The Ibo village has many practices that they follow because they believe that evil spirits are always surrounding them. The Ibo people have superstitions like being afraid of the night, not calling a snakes name at night, and throwing twins in the evil forest. "That's when he realized that twins are actually left in the forest to die because their religion declared twins bad luck for the parents" (Bookrags #2). This quote is explaining that if a mom has a set of twins, the parents of the child will leave the twins in the evil forest to die because the twins are known to be bad luck. If someone is known as being an evil person, they will also throw him or her in the evil forest. Another Ibo belief is called ogbanje, which is when children die at a young age and come back to the mother's stomach to be born again. The children is thought to come back as an evil spirit, and is known to torture their mother. It is a never ending cycle for the mother who has miscarriages or children under the age of six die. One other important spiritual person the Ibo people follow is an oracle named Agbala. She is a priestess who can tell the future, and whom everyone listens very carefully to. If Agbala tells someone to do something, they must do it. "Consulting Agbala, the Oracle of the Hills and Caves, is a ritualistic part of the Ibo religion" (Bookrags #2). She is the woman who many people consult when they have troubles or need advice. The people who consult her will follow anything that she says because she is perceived as a wise
I, Obeirika, am writing to you, the District Commissioner, in order to combat your respond to the portrayal of the Ibo. I plan to help you understand the Ibo internal logic so that you can comprehend and value it. We Ibo believe that killing twins is necessary because the earth had decreed that they were an offense on the land and must be destroyed. If we did not exact punishment for an offense against the earth goddess. Her wrath was unleashed on all of the land. If welcoming twins makes the earth goddess angry, then the Christian practice of saving twins is going against our earth goddess. That could and will throw us into chaos. The view maybe barbaric but it’s also our way of living.
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 is like your spirit and could determine whether you had good or bad fortune.
By describing such customs, Achebe demonstrates that the Ibo have a unique and structured society with civilized customs that make up every part of Ibo’s lives. The Ibo based almost everything they did on their strong religious beliefs. The Ibo had many gods whom they worshipped and respected deeply. The Ibo’s religion was involved in the way they governed, the way they interacted, the way they decided on war and other issues, and even the way they farmed.
One of the flaws inside the Ibo culture that eventually leads to their downfall is the social system. The weaker people join the church as a way to gain acceptance. The osu, or outcasts who lived in the Ibo culture want to feel accepted and as a result, follow the Christians. “The two outcasts shaved off their hair, and soon they were the strongest adherents of the new faith” (157). These two outcasts never have the feeling of being a part of the clan. The church welcomes them. The osu cannot cut their hair, marry, or receive a title in the clan. They are “cast out like lepers” (157). The church welcomes the osu and treats them like human beings. This is where the Ibo social system is at fault. An ideal job is to be a farmer and since not everyone can afford seeds and a barn...
Firstly, the church disproves many of the Igbo superstitions ,which encourages the Igbo to break the traditions that they had followed for many years. Therefore, slowly destroying their society. For instance, when the white men who brought Christianity to the people of Umuofia speak to the clan of the village about their new religion. They request a piece of land to build their church on. The clan decides to give them a piece of land of the Evil forest and let them stay. To the clans surprise this happens ”At last the day came by which all the missionaries should have died. But they were still alive, building a new red-earth and thatch house for their teacher, Mr. Kiaga. That week they won a handful more converts.(151)”. The Evil Forest was known as a forest where people go to die, and the clan members thought that by allowing the missionaries to build their church in the evil Forest they could easily get rid of them. Since, the white men didn’t die but lived, this made the Ibo people question their own beliefs. When some of the villagers noticed that they were mislead by their gods they decide to convert to Christianity. Either because Christianity seemed stronger than the ...
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
Cultures and politics among cultures have a way of defining evil for their own inhabitants. The Europeans who visited the Ibo culture in Things Fall Apart viewed many of the customs that the natives practiced as evil or barbaric or primitive. The Ibo concept of the "Evil Forest" was one of them. It was something that each village had and "In it were buried all those who died of the really evil diseases, like leprosy and smallpox." (Achebe 148) Another belief held by the tribe in the novel is that if a woman has children, and each dies under "evil" circumstances, then she is under attack by an evil tormentor. The remedy to this problem is to " Let her not sleep in her hut. Let her go and stay with her people. In that way she will elude her wicked tormentor and break its evil cycle of birth and death" (Achebe 77).
Religion and the Igbo People The Igbo are a profoundly religious people who believe in a benevolent creator, usually known as Chukwu, who created the visible universe (uwa). Opposing this force for good is agbara, meaning spirit or supernatural being. In some situations people are referred to as agbara in describing an almost impossible feat performed by them. In a common phrase the igbo people will say Bekee wu agbara.
The Ibo’s government is administered by the nine egwugwu who are ancestral spirits that represent each village of the clan. As large crowds of the Ibo tribe would gather on the village
The Ibo culture is also depicted as primitive and unjust by Achebe. This is noted in the primitive aspects of the Ibo people’s system of belief, which appears uncivilised and unjust. These examples of the Ibo culture are then combined with and redisplayed by the other primary method that Achebe uses to depict the dual aspects of Ibo culture, the two missionaries figures. Firstly Mr. Brown is utilised in a way that acknowledges the sophisticated structure and beliefs of the Ibo culture and improvement brought to the Ibo people through the missionaries involvement in the village.
The Yoruba Religion believes in a kind of reincarnation provided by their Gods. These Gods are very sacred to the Yoruba people. They are viewed as representations of the natural forces present in life. In addition, they have strong reverence of their ancestors. These ancestors at times will return in spiritual form in order to aid their descendants. The main problem religion recognizes is the losing of one’s self or in other words not following one’s destiny. The belief of the Yoruba is that this problem arises due to one forgetting themselves and they struggle remember their goals in life and to find themselves once again. The Yoruba are not alone however when trying to find their identities once again they have the aid of their family heads, priests and diviners. The people who fill these roles go through much hard work in order to aid their fellows to find themselves and to once again follow their paths in life. The Yoruba also strongly believe in the idea of three levels of life one devoted to Heaven, another to a habitat for humans and animals, and finally one as the home for the dead. I personally find the most important aspect of this religion to be the idea of the family structure. Many of the occurrences in this religion
In Things fall apart, Chinua Achebe showed us the richness of the Igbo traditional culture as well as the destruction of it through the activities of British missionaries. The appearance of Christianity on the Nigerian tribal land led to the disintegration of belief in the Igbo society, and made way for British colonization. Were the British the only cause of the destruction of the Igbo culture? The appearance of a new religion was not the sole reason for the loss of a tradition. The Igbo people also lost their culture because of many unreasonable conceptions in their spirituality.
many brutal wars, such as the Crusades, yet also founded many hospitals and charities, proving it difficult to categorize religion as a positive or negative influence. Author Chinua Achebe acknowledges this debate in his novel Things Fall Apart. This novel takes place in Nigeria during the late 19th century and shows the Ibo tribe’s transformation after Christian missionaries arrive. Achebe suggests that Christianity can guide a society by including outcasts but can also destroy a society by breaking family values and establishing schools.
& nbsp ; This novel also provides a very detailed, and seemingly accurate, account of the lives of the Ibo. The Ibo were an extremely spiritual people who answered to their gods daily. A hardworking people who base their personal worth on their community and crop achievements. Their yam crops were the backbone of the community and he who possessed the largest crops were usually respected by all in the community.
The Ibo people had a very different religious lifestyle and culture. They believed in many gods; they were a polytheistic tribe. The Ibo supreme god was Chukwu, and the people believe "he made all the world and the other gods" (Achebe 179). They believed that everything has a spirit and that ancestral spirits called the "egwugwu" kept the law. The Ibo...