Foot Binding In Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

In The Hearts and Souls of People When you take away all a person has ever known, what does that leave them with? Gandhi once said, “A nation’s culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of its people.” It has been argued that a people stripped of its culture, is a people stripped of their souls. If someone were to take away your family, friends, values, and your beliefs, then you are left with nothing. It almost feels as if you were left in the middle of a street with no lights, no signs, and no one else. That feeling would be bare and make you feel hopeless and helpless. In Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, the main character, Okonkwo, loses not just his culture, but his soul. However, they’re many real world examples of this. The trading post of North American …show more content…
Doing away with this type of culture actually helped everyone. “Thanks to some movement that was against this practice, it could ultimately be banished… The main reason against foot binding was suffering felt by the women in their lives… Finally in 1911 through the revolution of San Yat Sen, the tradition {and culture} of foot binding was totally banned” (Foot Binding 1). Foot binding was a very gruesome process and caused immense amounts of pain. Some girls would try and run away from their mothers so they wouldn’t have to get their feet bound. Doing away with this culture also helped out men. They didn’t have to worry about who to marry, what their parents would think, and what everyone else would think. It helped them by knowing that they could marry who they wanted, not who their parents intended for them to marry. Foot binding in the Chinese culture is a great example of how taking away their culture didn’t hurt them personally. Then again, mother’s that had their feet bound would want to have their daughters’ bound. Therefore, this ripped away on the inside of the women that loved this