Things Fall Apart And Walden Analysis

Throughout time the written history of the world literature has been able to bring a new perspective into unknown subjects for readers across the world. Bringing a new perspective on the world around them causes individuals to become greater thinkers and it allows them to question their motives and other people 's motives in order to improve their lives or other peoples lives. It also gives us a look into different cultures and to find similarities of that culture with our own cultures. This kind of thinking paves the way for a more developed outlook on life. Such pieces of literature that allow for this kind of thinking are Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, which is about a fierce warrior named Okonkwo of an Ibo village in Nigeria who is …show more content…
They share similar concepts which are change, identity or finding oneself, and society. These concepts go hand in hand in exploring the overall idea in each work. The first concept that is shared between Things Fall Apart and Walden is change. In Achebe 's novel, Okonkwo is faced with change after he and his family are forced to move away from his village for a long period of time, and many events take place during that time. This change can be shown on page 56, where it is written "and at last the locust descend. They settled on every tree and on every blade of grass; they settled on the roofs and covered the bare ground. Mighty tree branches broke away under them, and the whole country became the brown-earth color of the vast, hungry swarm". The locusts are a metaphor for European settlers arriving in the tribes, and they slowly consume everything until there is not much left over. This happens to the villages as they start to assimilate with the foreign culture and abandon everything they used to know behind. It leads to the destruction of many villages and even Okonkwo himself. In