Things Fall Apart Essay

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Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart examines the culture and daily life of a small village in the Lower Niger. As the story progresses, missionaries from the West try and expand their faith and government to a small village, Umuofia. The daily life of Umuofia revolves around appeasing deities, providing yams for their village and families, and if you are a man, broadcasting your masculinity for the whole World to see. A near perfect embodiment of what Umuofia stands for is Okonkwo, a regional renowned wrestler and warrior. Okonkwo is a very prideful man, and also a very fearful and angry man. His actions are very aggressive and sometimes careless as he tries to hold on to everything he knows, as everything he believes is being rocked to its core, he can not hold on to the ever changing reality that his faith and power structure is falling …show more content…
The missionaries come telling the people of the Lower niger that “they worshiped false gods” as they tried to convert people to Catholicism (Achebe 145). The people of Umuofia struggle with the fact that their faith has failed them when it comes to handling the missionaries. Umuofia’s faith is becoming absent and near the end of Okonkwo’s life the village was “turning and turning into the widening gyre” of doubt, of not knowing what is real and what is false (Yeats). Umuofia is a village of people who share the same culture and beliefs. Mr. Brown started a school to convert the youth to his faith and once “more people started to learn in his school” this new ideology split the village in two camps: conventional belief and western practices. (Achebe 181). As the village suffered an ideological split “ things [fell] apart; the centre [could not] hold/ mere anarchy [was] loosed” (Yeats). “The second Coming” conveys chaos and after the missionaries arrive, chaos is brought to Umuofia and things fall

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