Gender Roles in Things Fall Apart Essay

Chinua Achebe's “Things Fall Apart” is a historical fiction novel that is set in the early 1900’s. This novel is about the tragic downfall of the main character Okonkwo, a well respected leader within his clan in Umuofia, who is also a tragic hero because of several flaws. Okonkwo’s most noticeable flaw is that he fears weakness and failure. Okonkwo’s fatal flaw is his fear of weakness and failure. This fear was the result of the weakness and failure of his father, Unoka. He saw how nobody…

Colonization of Africa The European settlers forcibly seized Africans land, resources and plantation. European created myth of “white man’s burden” is to show themselves as enlightened and as someone who is above common natives whereas Africans as savage, uncivilized and barbarians. But it only reveals one fact that how dehumanizing colonialism was in terms of creating hierarchy by categorizing human being. European imperialist mission to dominate the colonized land was based on…

The theme of fear and paranoia presented in Waiting for the Barbarians, by J.M. Coetzee, apparent in the white population of the frontier town, lies in the ever present idea that black people are inherently evil and should be avoided at all times. This idea presented by Coetzee, stems from the similar mentality present in what was then, current day South Africa. It can be proved that this idea was merely formed from paranoia, with little substantial evidence to prove the dark side of the black…

concern for humanity; this is seen in all his works. He has a deep concern for man, especially the weak and oppressed. He believes that the world is not created for man to conquer and abuse it, Rather he believes that all the living and Non-living things should live in harmony Karnad focuses him attention on the downtrodden and less privileged people of the society. He has this at the back of his mind that is why all his writings speak for the women and people at the ground level. Girish…

Baka and Hadza v. Urban European Society: A Rebuttal of Thomas Hobbes Statement Regarding Life Outside of European Life Throughout existence, all sides of the globe have had ever-growing communities with different worldviews and perception of what society should look like. Communities like the ones seen in “The Baka: People of the Forest” and “The Hadza: Last of the First” widely differ from what westerners are used to seeing. The Baka people of the Baka community live in the southeast rain…

Literature is very often written to create, describe, or maintain a dynamic between the insider and the outsider. In order to make the reader aware of who is an insider and who an outsider, writers use various strategies to exclude and other certain characters and character traits. In the writing of John Leo Africanus’s A Geographical History of Africa, he describes the Africans as having both virtues and vices in very extreme measures. For example, Africanus frequently uses absolute words like…

In the 16th century, the Queen Mother Pendant Mask (pictured on the cover page) was created in the Kingdom of Benin to honor the Oba (King) Esigie’s mother, Idia, the first “Queen Mother” (or “iyoba”) of Benin.*************** (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, i.e. The Met Museum) The people who created this were known as the Edo people, also called “Bini”, who are located in today’s southern Nigeria and speak a Volta-Niger language, which is one of the branches of the Niger-Congo language family.…

Although Gile Corey’s death was caused by being crushed by stones, it was ultimately a little slip up by him that caused his own death. While reading The Crucible, we find out that Giles was a very old man that was blamed for everything in the town. If a cow had been stolen, he was blamed even if the cow had run away. He was married to Martha Corey who gets accused of Witchcraft. In The Crucible, Giles Corey makes the mistake of bringing suspicion to his wife’s name which in turn leads to…

wash, take care of children and become mothers. Due to globalization, there is equality and now both boys and girls have equal opportunities in regard to education and workforce too. This has greatly changed our community’s view of education and the role of men and women…

Chinua Achebe’s 1958 novel Things Fall Apart captures these detrimental effects of European colonization through the perspective of the African tribes themselves, specifically the Igbo people of Nigeria. The three-part story follows the life of Okonkwo, a strong and heavily revered clan member, whose village becomes disrupted by the arrival of Christian missionaries, whose teachings begin to radically shift the tribe’s culture into utter chaos. Eventually, the village falls into the hands of…