The first demonstration of an Ibo value in Things Fall Apart, occurs when Okonkwo’s daughter becomes severely ill with fever (iba), and is taken to Agabala, the Oracle; a god and prophet of the Ibo people. Achebe demonstrated the beliefs of the people by introducing and characterizing the Oracle as a well respected, religious figure of power and authority. The author also uses his native diction to emphasize the importance and realism of the Oracle to the clan. The relationship and respect shared between the Ibo people and their religious figures is proof that Achebe exhibited the value of religion successfully. The relationships in the Ibo tribe are necessary throughout Achebe’s novel. The clan develops relationships by age and gender, the men and elderly being highly respected, whereas, women are viewed as less and the childbearers. In the Ibo clan’s individualized families, Polygyny is acutely common, making an average Ibo family quite large. In Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo’s family included three wives and 8 children, whom he regularly becomes angered with and beat, and its regularity is accepted as normal. Ibo relationships can also be formed by the social status of the male, based on wealth that is …show more content…
commonly determined by amount of yams, indifferent of their occupation. Achebe demonstrates the Ibo core values of relationship, the yam, and social status, through careful coordination and understanding of the culture. Food, specifically the yam, has a prevailing sovereignty over the people of Ibo culture. Things Fall Apart continuously reverts to the importance of the yam to not only Okonkwo, but the clan as a whole. The Ibo people planted their yams when the perfect growing season arrived, and harvested them when the growing season ended. Early in the story, Okonkwo receives his yam seeds as a young man, unfortunately, the climate of that year was the worst it had ever been. The narrator quotes, “That year the harvest was sad, like a funeral, and many farmers wept as they dug up the miserable and rotting yams. One man tied his cloth to a tree branch and hanged himself” (24). Achebe reveals the weightiness of the yam to the reader through exaggerated, but truthful, consequences. The author is able to demonstrate his knowledge of the Ibo culture through the intricate detail of the climate, seasons, and the agricultural process that is taken to grow the king yam. The beloved sweet potato is also used as a social currency to the Nigerian environment and its people. The quality and amount of yams were used to measure the wealth of a clan member, which would then raise or lower their social status. Okonkwo had numerous yams due to hard work and several years of agricultural practice, therefore, he was highly ranked in the Ibo community. Besides the un-dying importance of mention of yams, Achebe includes a new value to the story that is tucked away. The Ibo people value community, as much as they do King Yam. The Ibo culture is displayed in many ways throughout Things Fall Apart, and a strong value is overlooked by those who are not looking for it.
Throughout the novel, Okonkwo is never physically alone. Okonkwo is always with a friend or family member, making community a hidden value in Achebe’s story. Community to the Ibo includes physical presence, as well as, folktales and proverbs often told or shared by the clan. A clear display of the importance of the folktales is Ikemefuna’s chanted song from when he was a child. Several other songs and chants are mentioned throughout the novel by fellow community members, or children singing about the weather. Similar to other values, Achebe uses his native diction to add verisimilitude and realism into the culture’s
story. Things Fall Apart is an expertly written medium of art that highlights the life of a hidden African culture in southern Nigeria. Religion, folktales, relationships, yams, social status, and community are the evident values of the Ibo tribe displayed creditably by Things Fall Apart, written by Chinua Achebe.These values of the Ibo people are displayed through the triumphs and trials of the main character Okonkwo, but also through literary writing style and native diction by author Chinua Achebe. Achebe uses his master writing techniques, diction, plot scheme, and characterization to create the well composed values and culture of the Ibo people. The values of the Ibo culture collaborate to create a strong system of beliefs for the Ibo people.
American culture is mixture of many things. Which makes it comparable to the Igbo culture in the novel Things Fall Apart. In the novel, their culture is very different from ours in America. They have different gender roles, beliefs, and how they live.
In the book Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, the Ibo culture and culture today have similar and contrasting marriages. The Ibo and cultures today are similar because people can get married whenever they want. However today, people usually don't get married at young ages like the Ibo people. The Ibo culture and people today can also have as many children as they want. Both cultures usually have a lot of help from different men, women, and even children. "Some of the women cooked the yams and the cassava, and others prepared vegetable soup. Young men pounded the foo-foo or split firewood. The children made endless trips to the stream" (113). The Ibo culture had a marriage system called polygamy, which is when a man is married to several women.
Achebe chose to write his novel realistically. He includes the beauty of the Ibo's culture, as well as the gruesome. He recorded that a man might help kill his own adopted son for fear that he would be "thought weak." He also revealed that newborn twins were thrown away. Along with the "great depth" comes tragedy, but all of the details were required to make an accurate presentation of the subject. The writer must understand that the truth is not selective to the pleasant facts. The District Commissioner believed that it was important that he "be firm in cutting out the details" and decreed that a paragraph would suffice for the explanation of Okonkwo. However, Achebe, in essence, wrote an entire novel about this character. It is arrogant to believe that the complete understanding of a human being can be accomplished so easily.
In Chinua Achebe’s novel, Things Fall Apart, the traditional Ibo tribe is a very effective and lasting culture. They are the first to introduce many systems and traditions that we still use in society today. One of the major things the Ibo tribe introduces is the judial system, respect during conversation, hospitality, strength and masculinity. In Things Fall Apart, the author wants us to understand the Ibo tribe and feel sympathy for them, including Okonkwo.
Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart was written about European colonization Africa. Throughout the novel language, social structure, and religion are all brought over by Europeans. Things Fall Apart focuses on the difference between genders in Igbo culture, a system of tribes, in Nigeria. Achebe uses a patriarchal society to describe the divide between the Igbo people. Okonkwo, the protagonist, is a great example of how all the authority in this African culture belongs to men. The representation of demanding African men, story telling, deprived African women, and Okonkwo’s fatal falling in Igbo society all contribute to the significance of what masculinity really is throughout Achebe’s book.
Chinua Achebe born November 16, 1930, was raised in a large village by the name of Ogidi, which is in southeastern Nigeria. Raised by his parents, he excelled in school and even won a scholarship for undergraduate studies and was a graduate at the University of Ibadan. In the novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, He tells a story about the protagonist Okonkwo who is the leader of the Umuofia Tribe for the Igbo people. The Ibo religion has one GOD by the name of Chukwu who was the believed creator of heaven and Earth. Similarly the Oracle was a prophecy from GOD that the people must obey, and if disobeyed they shall be dammed. The Christianity religion of the western people, impacts the Igbo tribe through education, language and traditional
The novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe has long been seen as a response to Christian colonial literature, which presents the African as a barbaric dark image. It is therefore ponder some that Achebe would choose to shed light on Africa by deconstructing and ultimately destroying his main character Okonokwa. Through examining Okonokwa and his character flaws and essentially the reasons for his downfall one may surmise that shedding light on the African plight was not Achebe's some message in this novel.
To understand Okonkwo let us look at Ibo society. We see the Ibo way of life before the change occurs and the way they live their life after. The main thing that happens after the arrival of the missionaries is that the tribe falls apart. The main reason for this is the coming of the missionaries, who bring with them new ways of life, and mostly better ways of life. Achebe tries to show us that the missionaries showed people who were hurt by the beliefs of the tribe that this did not have to go on in their religion, and that's the main reason why people switched to their religion. Achebe shows us that the tribe had many wrong beliefs bef...
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.
It is important to note that Achebe was a product of both traditional Igbo society and the colonizing British culture. Therefore, the narrative is influenced by two strikingly opposed philosophies. The tragic hero, Okonkwo, may have been crafted to express, not only the Igbo philosophy of harmony, but the outsider interpretation of a seemingly paradoxical belief system. Achebe's representation of Okonkwo may symbolize the collision of these two conflicting philosophies.
Before the arrival of the Europeans, Achebe did a excellent job portraying how the life of Igbo was before they were forced to oppose their own culture. To support this theme, Achebe included detailed descriptions of social rituals within each family, the justice system, religious practices and consequences, preparation and indulgence of food, the marriage process and the distributing of power within the men. Achebe shows how every man has an opportunity to prove himself worthy to achieve a title on the highest level, based merely on his own efforts. One may argue that the novel was written with the main focus on the study of Okonkwo’s character and how he deteriorates, but without the theme that define the Igbo culture itself, we would never know the universe qualities of the society that shaped Okonkwo’s life. The lives of the Igbo people was no different to the actual lives of the Ibos people back in the early days of Africa. Just like in Things Fall Apart, in actual African tribes there was never a ruler. “Very interesting thing about these villages is that there is no single ruler or king that controls the population. Decisions are made by including almost everyone in the village” (AfricaGuide). Using the theme, Achebe educated readers on by mirroring real African life in her
Iyasẹre, Solomon Ogbede. “Okonkwo's Participation in the Killing of His ‘Son’ in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart: A Study of Ignoble Decisiveness.” Understanding Things Fall Apart: Selected Essays and Criticism. Troy, NY: Whitson, 1998. 129-40. Print.
As the main character, he shows how the conflict of cultures destroyed families and many of the men’s sense of identity as warriors. Okonkwo’s family really does fall apart all in the span of a few years. Nwoye leaves to join the missionaries, and Ezinma is married off as soon as the family arrives back in Umuofia. The arrival of the missionaries split apart Okonkwo’s family, and shows Achebe’s point that cultural invasions like that in the novel causes division among the people in an area, and can even destroy families. Another way that Okonkwo’s response develops the author’s point in the novel is when he loses his sense of identity. Everything that he held close to his heart was changed. When the missionaries first arrive in Abame, they are met with violence; the people kill the messenger almost immediately. However, the missionaries’ response displays their superiority in technology and firepower. The author writes, “The three white men and a very large number of other men surrounded the market… And they began to shoot. Everybody was killed, except the old and the sick who were at home and a handful of men and women whose chi were wide awake and brought them out of the market’” (Achebe 140). This example of the missionaries’ power frightens most of the Ibo tribe into submission. The men lose their sense of identity as warriors. The novel wants to show the
The religious aspect of the Ibo culture is that of both pre colonial and post colonial aspects. The pre colonial ibo worshiped many gods and above all the other gods are Chukwu were the gods below him are just messengers such as the earth goddess ala. They as well worship their ancestors that give them better harvest and luck. Then when the white men came from england and other areas bringing christianity they changed the culture of ibo and if some towns and villages did not comply to them they would wipe out most villages, an example from Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe in chapter twenty it talks about how the people of this village of Abame. Another example of this is at the end of the book in chapter twenty five the District Commissioner
Okonkwo is the protagonist of this story. The weak are compared to women and the strong are compared to men in this society. Chinua Achebe tried to sketch the position and status of women in the Ibo society. In this story, Achebe gives an account of gender discrimination prevailing over the Ibo society. The novel is a depiction of Postcolonial criticism. For example, it is mostly concerned with text critiques. Post-colonialism is a concept that goes against colonialism. Therefore, pos...