Things Fall Apart

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Recommended: Cultural Significance in Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

In Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart the characters are faced with the decision to join the new religion that has been brought into the area or to move away from it. Enoch is a man who fits into the new culture, he was an outcast of his original culture and this new group of people brought him in. He has problems too though because he creates conflict between the new religion and the old religion of the tribe. There are different consequences for his mistakes but in the end the all get resolved one way or another even if it is not in the way he would want. Different occurrences cause different problems and whatever happens will change things for the next generation of people. As times change and new cultures come about in new places …show more content…

He was an outcast from the tribe because of his beliefs, and there was a rumor that went around saying that he had killed the sacred python of the snake cult and ate it. “The story went around that Enoch had killed and eaten the sacred python”(Achebe 178). The sacred python was what the people worshiped, and because of what was said about Enoch his father a priest in the snake cult put a curse on him. “His name was Enoch and his father was a priest of the snake cult”(Achebe 178). Also there was no mention of Enochs mother which could led to the thought of her death of her leaving the …show more content…

Brown left and Mr. Smith came to the tribe of Umofia from England. Enoch was a fiery person and was always in a was someone, it is because of what Enoch did that the catholic church got burnt down. When the tribes people were celebrating the earth's deity, a celebration were the ancestors of the tribes come out of the ground and possess the egwugwu, Enoch decide to do the unthinkable. The greatest crime of the tribe is to unmask and reduce the immortal prestige that the egwugwu hold. Enoch did just this”whereupon they all came back and one of them gave Enoch a good stroke of the cane, which was always carried. Enoch fell on him and tore off his mask” (Achebe 186). Enoch was so into this new religion that it brought him to do what no one in the tribe or in the group of missionaries would do. Enoch did not think it was the rage built up inside him that forced him to do this, what he did forced him to be punished and Mr. Smith took him into the church to be saved. What Enoch did created danger for the rest of the catholic people and made the tension between tribe and church greater then ever. The church could do nothing for Enoch but offer protection from the crowds of people who want to put him on trial and have him sent away or killed. What Enoch did made him the target of the attack, from

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