Chinua Achebe Essay

friends and relatives, he has to pay back; moreover, he is not respected at all he has no titles. How would you respond, make a name for yourself, and prove that you are nothing like your father? Okonkwo perfectly fits this description. Written by Chinua Achebe in 1958, Things Fall Apart takes place in Nigeria and centers the story about Okonkwo when he becomes a man. Okonkwo is an aggressive man with a short temper; he also is a self-made, able-bodied, and respected member of the Umuofia clan…

On average, a human adult makes 35,000 decisions in a day, and every one of those decisions is influenced by what that person chooses whether that would be his or her values, situation in life, or people in his or her life. Chinua Achebe’s novel, Things Fall Apart, creates a protagonist, Okonkwo, whose life decisions influence by his view of the chi causes destruction. The background of the chi, how the chi and Okonkwo’s characteristics cloud his perspective on his life, and Okonkwo’s actions…

The novel Things Fall Apart, the author Chinua Achebe illustrates and portrays the idea of the Igbo society in Africa. The setting takes place in an African village of Umuofia, when the main protagonist, Okonkwo is the a well known Igbo man also a tragic hero. He wrestles Amalinze the Cat, and overall defeats him which leads him to be a successful man. He also is married to three wives which shows him that he is a great man in the village. However, he is also portrayed as a tragic hero, by…

denied the right to plant yams, as they are an intricate symbol of masculinity. “Yam, the king of crops, was a very exacting king. For three or four moons it demands hard work and constant attention from cock-crow till the chickens went back to roost” (Achebe 33). Men who are outcast in are called the Osu, and are unable to ever cut their hair, wed, or given a proper burial. These men, along with others who speak their mind or disagree with the customs are outcasts. They are seen as irrelevant…

missionaries, who are trying to force their religion into them. This causes Okonkwo to act recklessly when he kills the messenger: “In a flash Okonkwo drew his machete. […] Okonkwo’s machete descended twice and the man’s head lay beside his uniformed body” (Achebe 204). Okonkwo utterly hates the thought that his village is slowly becoming part of the missionaries, and goes through with killing the messenger sent by the white missionaries. As more and more Ibo villagers join the whites, Okonkwo…

in Africa. Since exploration began, white Europeans have grown to feel superior to other peoples and this is reflected in the imperialism of Africa. One book that reflects the Europeans’ ethnocentric view is Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Chinua Achebe wrote Things Fall Apart in order to show Europeans that Igbo people and colonizing people are not extremely different, and both could have lived peacefully together. However, stereotypes of savageness and inhuman ways presented in the book,…

The historical fiction novel, Things Fall Apart written by a Nigerian author Chinua Achebe was written in the 1950’s, during the postcolonial era. The story takes place in Umuofia around nine villages and is about Okonkwo, a man who is living a life with anger and fear. He is a very respected person and is also a polygamous man. The white missionaries are represented differently. In the Ibo culture Okonkwo saw the white men as a threat due to their development in Umuofia. From beginning to end…

Often times in life men feel like they need to provide for their family and fulfill the roles of their society. Things Fall Apart is a novel written by Chinua Achebe, which takes place in 1890’s Nigeria. The Ibo civilisation is falling apart and Okonkwo takes the damage. Krik? Krak! is a series of short stories written by Edwidge Danticat that takes place in modern day Haiti. Guy is a family man who is struggling to provide for them but gives up and has a downfall. Although both Okonkwo and Guy…

“There is no story that is not true, the world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others” (Achebe). This quote greatly depicts the moral of one of Achebe’s most successful novels. In the book, Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe, the author uses the introduction of Western ideas into the Ibo culture to overall develop a father-son motif between Okonkwo and Nwoye, along with the establishment of cultural identity. Additionally, in the novel Things Fall Apart,…

“Things fall apart when the center cannot longer hold” is a line from Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming” written in 1919. It inspired Chinua Achebe for the title of his novel Things Fall Apart, first published in 1959. Surprisingly, we can also link this line to the atmosphere in the other novel that will be quoted in this essay, The Interpreter published in 2003 and written by Suki Kim. These two novels deal with stories and characters that are extremely different – one follows the Igbo tribe and…