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…
B.Ananda Rao M.A,M.Phil,(Ph.D) Asst.Prof, of English Sri Vasavi Engg College, Tadepalligudem. “A study of tradition and culture in the selected plays of Wole Soyinka and Girish karnad”. INTRODUCTION Wole Soyinka is the first African writer to win the Nobel…
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…
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. Their territory is from west of the Niger River all the way to the swamps in the Niger Delta. ***********(The Editors of Encyclopaedia…
Even though globalization is bringing rapid cultural change in Kenya, there are still various cultural aspects for different communities that are still being preserved till today and in the years to come. I am from the Kalenjin community and we engage in various activities that still preserve our culture. The first aspect is in regard to our community language. From a young age, children are still being taught our community language as they also learn the other commonly taught languages which…
continent of its natural resources as well as its people. 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…
Yesterday, November 2nd, 1893, Okonkwo, an influential leader of the Village of Umuofia in Southern Niger, was found dead hanging from a tree in his own compound. His death was ruled as suicide by hanging. On the 2nd, Okonkwo murdered one of the District Commissioner’s messengers at a village gathering. Several messengers were sent to disperse the assembly of villagers. Onlookers recalled the messenger saying, “The white man whose power you know too well has ordered this meeting to stop,” before…
Although Okonkwo may seem brave on the outside, this bravery is a result of his fear of being perceived as weak or unworthy, and becoming like his father. In the book “All thing fall apart” written by Achebe, on page 94 in the bottom of a paragraph, Achebe writes about Okonkwo’s discomfort he has fallen into because of his exile. Okonkwo so far in the book has proven to be a fighting person in all things in his life, but at a certain point he is not able anymore to achieve the greatness, and he…
In the story, Okonkwo has to face cultural collision with his family. He watches his family and the people around him fall apart and finds out he is not respected like he was at the start of the novel. The first reason Okonkwo’s sense of identity was challenged with the introduction of Western ideas because of Nwoye leaving his father to convert to christianity. We see evidence from the text when “Nwoye did not fully understand. But he was happy to leave his father. He would return later to his…
Protagonist of Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo witnesses the white men bring changes to his clan and attempt to colonize them for conquest. Described as “a man of action”, Okonkwo seemingly falls short of his reputation when he commits suicide at the end of the novel (10). Commonly viewed as succumbing to a hereditary disposition of femininity and weakness, this death is thought of as a failure on Okonkwo’s behalf, as something within the clan which fell apart like the title and epigraph suggests.…