Things Fall Apart Power Quotes

1. Perhaps the best example of women holding power in this novel is the priestess Chielo. She is one of the spiritual leaders in Okonkwo’s town. She has the respect of the entire village, not just the women. Her authority extends so far that at one point in the novel she takes one of Okonkwo’s children in the middle of the night to a religious site. She is free to do as she pleases. Okonkwo recognizes her authority and doesn’t put up a fight. He ends up following his wife and daughter to the religious site, but doesn’t interfere. Another example of women in this society having important roles are their jobs as teachers. They teach their children the importance of community and other life lessons by telling their children stories. Okonkwo treats many of the women in his life differently. He is secretly very fond of one of his daughters and wishes she had been born a boy. This

speaks to how Okonkwo views females. He sees them as a weaker supportive gender, almost as if to say they won’t be successful without the help from a man.

2. If we look at it from the perspective of Okonkwo, progress is a bad thing. As the world moves forward he tries to stay in the past. The reason he commits suicide in the end of the novel is because he realizes that the tribe won’t fight the westerners like the past generations might have. He is content living in a time where tradition is key to a person’s success. He understands what he has to do to be successful in this world and it is hard for him to accept the changes that were occurring. To Okonkwo, success is everything and he cannot accept failure. Ikemefuna is part of the same world Okonkwo is living in. He sees that hard work and dedication to tradition will bring a man success in life. He would have had the same problems Okonkwo was having accepting the changes Umuofia was going through.

3. I think that this book provides an honest portrayal of the colonization of different parts of Africa and the Ibo people in particular. I think that is was a good thing that it caused the response that it did. The way people viewed Nigeria was very one sided and this novel was a way of providing another part of the story. The fact that Achebe used certain events to help portray the westerners kept this book from becoming something like the District Commissioner was writing. I think that it was a positive assessment of the British in Nigeria. Compared to the way the British were writing about the Ibo people, this book was the best way to describe the events that took place in a way that people would want to read about it.

4.

The District Commissioner is a man who came to Nigeria with the idea that the people there were savages. He had the very common mindset for the period, in which Europeans were the educated, advanced, examples of a perfect society and everyone else was a savage. He went to Nigeria to share the ways of the civilized world. The only way he knows how to do this is by force. He enforced European laws in a society that doesn’t acknowledge them. He communicated his intentions through force, either because it was the only way he knew how or he just didn’t care. He used deceit to trick Okonkwo and the other community leaders into coming to his compound where he insulted and threatened them. He is the exact opposite of Mr. Brown, instead of using compromise and understanding to connect with the Ibo people, he uses brute froe and suppression. He symbolizes the way many of the Europeans saw the continent of Africa. Many people saw it as this wild untamed place that needed to be saved from itself through Jesus Christ and proper way of running a society, whether they liked it or

not.

5. I think that he chose the 1890’s because he would have met a lot more resistance if it had been current. He wanted people to hear and read the other story of Africa from the perspective of the Ibo people. I think that many people would have avoided reading it all together if it had been set in the 1950’, thinking that it was just a political commentary on current events. This way he could show the truth of the effects of colonization and keep people interested in the topic. During this time, there was great unrest in Nigeria between the Ibo and the rest of Nigerians. Since this book was primarily about the Ibo and their struggle it would not have been received well if it was about the current Ibo population. The current Ibo population was seen as the enemy in many parts of the country.

Nigeria-History Since 1960. (n.d.). Retrieved September 25, 2015.

Achebe, C. (1994). Things fall apart. New York: Anchor Books.