Okonkwo’s Cultural Collision in Nigeria
In the novel Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe, just such a culture clash takes place, with the main character Okonkwo's village being overtaken by Christian white men seeking to convert his tribe. Although many people become convinced of the new religion's authenticity over time, Okonkwo is an inflexible warrior at heart, and his refusal to accept the changes taking place in his community serves to further aggravate the point of the novel- that things that were once familiar always fall apart in the end.
In Okonkwo’s village, Umuofia, is one of a group of nine villages in Nigeria, and their isolation even from each other shows how far cut off they are from the rest of the world. However, the Ibo people who live there still have a very strong culture, consulting the Oracle for advice and having “egwugwu” (people dressed up as ancestral spirits) preside over trials. Okonkwo is very comfortable in this environment. He is highly esteemed among his fellows for his strength in wrestling and his always …show more content…
At first, they took it as a joke, allowing the foreigners to build churches and seek converts, but when these endeavors soon became successful, the people of Umuofia didn’t know what to believe anymore. Some buy into the new religion, while others thought different and came up up with the idea: scorn it and call to drive the foreigners out. No one supports the latter option more than Okonkwo, who laments that the men are all turning into women, and that they need to stand up for their traditional tribal beliefs over these alien ideas, reflecting that he sees the clan “breaking up and falling apart” (183). His strong, unflinching nature comes out clearly in this struggle, as he fights to preserve his way of life even when all his peers are giving way to the pressure of the white man’s
In the novel Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe, just such a culture clash takes place, with the main character Okonkwo's village being overtaken by Christian white men seeking to convert his tribe. Although many people become convinced of the new religion's authenticity over time, Okonkwo is an inflexible warrior at heart, and his refusal to accept the changes taking place in his community serves to further aggravate the point of the novel- that things that were once familiar always fall apart in the end.
In Okonkwo’s village, Umuofia, is one of a group of nine villages in Nigeria, and their isolation even from each other shows how far cut off they are from the rest of the world. However, the Ibo people who live there still have a very strong culture, consulting the Oracle for advice and having “egwugwu” (people dressed up as ancestral spirits) preside over trials. Okonkwo is very comfortable in this environment. He is highly esteemed among his fellows for his strength in wrestling and his always …show more content…
At first, they took it as a joke, allowing the foreigners to build churches and seek converts, but when these endeavors soon became successful, the people of Umuofia didn’t know what to believe anymore. Some buy into the new religion, while others thought different and came up up with the idea: scorn it and call to drive the foreigners out. No one supports the latter option more than Okonkwo, who laments that the men are all turning into women, and that they need to stand up for their traditional tribal beliefs over these alien ideas, reflecting that he sees the clan “breaking up and falling apart” (183). His strong, unflinching nature comes out clearly in this struggle, as he fights to preserve his way of life even when all his peers are giving way to the pressure of the white man’s