Thing

An ideal collective society is one that has a primary entity while also maintaining room for an individual to act on his or her own accord. There are many communities which fail to achieve such a society. In the book, Things Fall Apart, author Chinua Achebe creates the main protagonist, Okonkwo, and the story tracks his consistent struggle with maintaining individualism in the Umuofia tribe. The rigid structure of the Umuofia community hinders the individual from being able to fully thrive…

Comparisons Between Animals and Humans in Things Fall Apart The short story of The Tortoise and the Hare, written by Aesop is a well known anecdote throughout the world. It tells of a tortoise and a hare who compete in a race although they have unequal abilities. Behind the childish story lays an important lesson, slow and steady always wins the race. Aesop uses animals to compare them to humans through the use of metaphors which reveals much about human culture and morals. The notable and…

Max stampedes through the house chasing the dog with a fork. Where the Wild Things Are by Mark Sendak, originally published in 1963 by Harper Collins Publishers, opens up with a typical wild child causing trouble in every room he steps in. Max is a relatable to almost everyone. He gets sent to his room for causing a ruckus and decides to escape his fate in an imaginative way that seems only children can do. Sendak creates a story that follows Max through the height of his tantrum, without making…

The symbolic reference to ill-fated fortune in Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe can be seen from the word choice and foreshadowing of events to come. In the first place, Okonkwo is associated with a roaring fire throughout the story, giving his emotions no jest, but pure anger. “He sighed heavily, and as if in sympathy the smoldering log also sighed. And immediately Okonkwo’s eyes were opened and he saw the whole matter clearly. Living Fire begets cold, impotent ash. He sighed again, deeply”…

multiple times throughout the book to capture the dangers of vanity. Taking a plain element, the mirror, Grimm warns the audience of the eventual self-destruction that will occur with narcissism. Since motifs remain a conventional literary device, in Things Fall Apart Achebe uses the motif of parent-child relationships to characterize Okonkwo’s brutality and compassion, explore the complex nature of…

Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart is probably the most authentic and outstanding narrative ever written about colonial rule in Africa history at the turn of the twentieth century. The book was first published in 1958 and reprinted in 1962 (Achebe), which became the first novel in the African writer’s series. This book was written by a Nigerian and it set the village of Umuofia in eastern Nigeria. Achebe portrays a remarkable movement in Africa history as the man who invented African literature…

Treatment of the Tribe Okonkwo’s gun exploded and killed a boy during a funeral, he was banished to his motherland for seven years as punishment, after the accidental death of a 16-year-old boy. It was at this time that the missionaries’ movement set in amongst the villagers of Umuofia. Since Okonkwo was not in his village of Umuofia, he was not able to do anything to stop or persuade the villager from participating. Okonkwo’s own son Nwoye became a missionary, after hearing a song that…

is customary to make animal sacrifices to the earth goddess when planting crops. Yet again, ritual is used to communicate respect, in this case to the earth goddess who has control over the success of the yams. The Ibo people in the novel Things Fall Apart strongly believed in their customs and traditions. It’s all they knew all their lives. It wasn’t until the English missionaries came, that’s when everything changed for them. Their struggle to maintain their culture and their…

Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe, gets its name from the poem “The Second Coming.” “The Second Coming” describes the chaos after an unstated event. Things Fall Apart (TFA) is about a man named Okonkwo and his tribe. The novel is split into parts which follow his life and the changes in his society after white settlers arrive. Lines 3-6 in “The Second Coming” can be used to illustrate the destruction of the way of life experienced by the Igbo people in TFA. The line of the poem which lends…

In the novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, Okonkwo is a sympathetic character because he does seem to care about other people other than himself but, he also does not want to be seen as weak, so he will do anything needed to not be seen as weak. Okonkwo didn’t eat food for two days since the death of Ikemefuna. Okonkwo does seem to care about other people other than himself because when Ezinma was taken into the cave, he could not sleep, he would constantly walk back and forth waiting to…