Things Fall Apart Igbo Culture

Throughout the novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, the theme of change is extraordinarily prevalent. The novel starts off with Achebe taking readers through Umuofia, an area of Nigeria in which Igbo people reside, and telling them about their different rituals and beliefs. As the story goes on readers get more familiar with this and begin to understand just how important these customs are to the Igbo and how they impact their lives day to day. Further into the story, however, change begins to occur in Umuofia, most notably when British missionaries come in and try to take these cherished traditions away and one can see the people of Umuofia struggle between the decision to convert to the British’s religion of Christianity or stick to …show more content…
Due to this importance, author Chinua Achebe dedicated the entirety of the first portion of his novel, Things Fall Apart, to explaining, in remarkably specific detail, the Igbo’s customs to his readers. From the novel, one can see that the culture of Umuofia and the Igbo is created of a variation of many different aspects, from their everyday lives, which includes harvesting and working around the obi, and language, which they speak eloquently using an abundance of proverbs, to their different traditions and celebrations, which include the Week of Peace and the Feast of the New Yam. The religious aspect of the Igbo’s culture is one of the most evident in the novel and clearly one of the most important to them. Most, if not all, of the different things that the Ibo do, they are doing in order to appease their Gods and Goddesses and their overall Creator, whom they do not believe they should ever upset in any way for fear they should receive horrible luck as punishment (e.g. an unsuccessful harvest in the upcoming year or infertility). The culture of the Igbo, including their beliefs and different ways of doing things, have been passed down to them from generation to generation, proving that they …show more content…
The main character on whom readers should focus on when it comes to not letting their culture being taken from them is Okonkwo, who the story mainly focuses on. Okonkwo has a strong opposition against the British missionaries from the beginning and only gets angrier the more his son starts to show interest in them, though he turns his back on Nwoye when he eventually joins the Christians entirely. While throughout the entire time the British missionaries were there he showed anger and acted like he was going to start a war, saying “‘I shall fight alone if I choose’” (Achebe 201), eventually he does not wind up fighting the missionaries but, instead, ends his own life. Okonkwo, the picture of a strong, fighting warrior, would rather take his own life than have the life he had always lived be changed right before his eyes, without him being able to do anything about it.
The main theme that Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart portrays is change. The novel depicts a group of Igbo people in Umuofia who experience a culture clash with a group of British missionaries that have come to Nigeria to convert them to Christianity. A portion of Umuofia’s people change their ways to join the British, including the son of the novel’s main character, but most of them will not let their traditions falter