Things Fall Apart And Hotel Rwanda Analysis

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Consequences are the negative or positive outcomes, resulting from an action. Citizens all over the world make many decisions every day and take actions that result in repercussions that they may not have even imagined in their lives and the lives of others. Characters in literature also make split-second decisions, leading to events that may either benefit or harm them. The characters Okonkwo and Paul from Things Fall Apart and Hotel Rwanda, clearly express many examples of such actions and the resulting consequences, some of which remain very serious for themselves and others. Actions define a person based on how they handle the situation that is presented. The characters that face crises choose paths that reflect how they act as a person, …show more content…
Both pieces of literature parade the problems that can arise when different cultures come together. In Things Fall Apart, conflict between the village and the Christian missionaries lead to people dividing up and fighting with each other. When Okonkwo returns from exile after seven years and tries to rally the people to rebel, he kills a missionary, which leads to Okonkwo losing faith in Umuofia and his eventual suicide. He takes his own life because if he stays alive, the missionaries would kill him or slaughter the entire town. His action compares to the movie Hotel Rwanda when the Rwandan President moves around by flying to a meeting to sign a treaty between the Tutsis and Hutus, but the plane is shot down and he dies in the crash. Although the plane was shot down by Hutu militants, the Tutsis were blamed for this incident, leading the Hutus not to trust the Tutsis, and started a genocidal rampage to cleanse Africa of all Tutsis. The conflict brings the consequence of killing and destruction. Also, in Things Fall Apart the villages in Africa were not modernized and seemed primitive to outsiders, but in fact, the culture has its own courts, religion, status, and rules of family life. The European missionaries did not see it this way, and assumed the Igbo were primal, uneducated savages. Their unwillingness to appreciate the culture of the Igbo hurts the Igbo people because they were then treated poorly and unfairly. They were forced into a religion different to the one that they had always known, unfamiliar clothing, and made to speak a different language. This contrasts to the movie Hotel Rwanda, in which the Tutsis and Hutus benefited from European colonialism. The Tutsis became surrounded by hateful Hutus that wish to kill them, but with the help and

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