...Magdaleno Mr. Lopez July 23, 2014 AP Lit Things Fall Apart "The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart"(pg.176). Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, a historical fictional novel, was written to present a complex, dynamic society to a western audience who perceived African society as primitive, simple, and reversed. I strongly recommend this novel because of its differentiated perspectives of two intertwining stories for example: Okonkwo, a respected and powerful figure in the Ibo village, Umuofia, was also warrior whose major weakness in the novel is the inability to accept change. This ends up destroying him in the finale of the book. Chinua Achebe's other story described the influences of white missionaries on African tribes. Chinua Achebe also addresses the clash of cultures in the second part, especially within their religions, but implies that there is no right or wrong in their differences between their cultures. Fear is an emphasized theme throughout the novel because fear is what drives Okonkwo terror by the wrath of god's, guilt, and his community disapproval upon them. This theme is also looked as symbolization to Okonkwo's dedication to be a successful man because the fear was so fierce that it controlled his life...
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...will glorify only the hunter.” Chinua Achebe, Home and Exile Literature is the expression of life in words of truth and beauty.It encompasses all genres of literature-poetry,prose,fiction,drama,philosophy,history etc.Among them,fiction is any narrative,whether in prose or verse,which is invented instead of being an account of events that actually happened. The voice of Africa in the world of letters tries to emancipate Africa from its literary stereotype.Africa is no longer a gloomy phenomenon,a dark continent.Chinua Achebe, the major exponent of the modern African novel,is greatly concerned with the two realities of social man –his individual and group identity,the legacy of colonialism, and the shift in the system of values of life leading to rampant corruption- moral and monetary. He is also concerned with the use of English as the medium of expression of African experience defining the relevance of colonial and post-colonial experience to the present .Achebe’s novels are dialectic tranformation of experience, a new way of looking at tradition to create a different order of reality through universalizing imagination.Though he has followed the established tradition of novel writing in English, Achebe has put few things ‘African’ and has successfully employed certain narrative techniques of narration to give authenticity and African flavour to his novels in order to attract the native audience and overseas readers as well. Chinua Achebe , the doyen of African writing...
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...In Chinua Achebe’s novel, Things Fall Apart, men are presented as the more prominent gender in the village of Umuofia. The novel was written in 1959, and the purpose of the book was to provide a perspective to those who feel as if African Americans have no culture. This novel is set during the 1890’s in the poor villages of Nigeria such as Umuofia. When the book starts, we are introduced to two characters, Unoka and Okonkwo. Both of these men are opposites to one another, and Okonkwo is considered a success in the village of Umuofia, while Unoka is considered the village’s largest failure. Chinua Achebe portrays men as failures, masculine, and as weak minded. Unoka is Okonkwo’s father and in the village, Unoka is known as being the most irresponsible man in Umuofia due to him owing money to most of the people of the village and him not being able to provide for his family most of the time. “Unoka, the grown-up, was a failure. He was poor, and his wife and children had barely enough to eat. People laughed at him because he was a loafer, and they swore never to lend him any more money because he never...
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...of high status, has a tragic flaw, and discovers his fate by his own actions. Okonkwo in Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe could be easily classified as a tragic hero because his character satisfies all the requirements set forth by Aristotle. Because Okonkwo was a powerful and respected man in Umuofia, possessed the flaw of the fear of failure and weakness, and his unwillingness to change after returning from exile resulted in his demise, his character is undoubtedly that of a tragic hero. In order to be classified as a tragic hero, Aristotle requires that the character must be noble or a man of high status. Okonkwo in Things Fall Apart was “well...
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...As we read more into Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart” we leant that Okonkwo has been exile from his village and it is having a negative impact on him. To begin, from the moment we were introduced to Okonkwo, it’s told that he’s a powerful and well-motivated man, who’s worked hard to reach the current position he has acquired. When he was younger his family was underprivileged and his dad Okoye was seen as a borrower with no interest to reimburse things he had he borrow. Okonkwo considered this to be failure, “even as a little boy he had resented his father’s failure and weakness….”and he sees his father as one; therefore he’s always been motived to be the complete opposite. However, being exiled from his village has turned Okonkwo in a broken man....
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...characters not only define the said term, they take the the path of doom and centered, desirous actions-elf next level through their actions, and each one takes is different. Okonkwo is “a man of action, a man of war” and a member of high status in the Igbo village. He holds the prominent position of village clansman due to the fact that he had “shown incredible prowess in two intertribal wars”. Okonkwo’s hard work had made him a “wealthy farmer” and a recognized individual amongst the nine villages of Umuofia and beyond. Okonkwo’s tragic flaw isn’t that he was afraid of work, but rather his fear of weakness and failure which stems from his father’s, Unoka, unproductive life and disgraceful death. “Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and weakness….It was not external but lay deep within himself. It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father.” Okonkwo’s father was a lazy, carefree man whom had a reputation of being “poor and his wife and children had just barely enough to eat... they swore never to lend him any more money because he never paid back.” Unoka had never taught Okonkwo what was right and wrong, and as a result Okonkwo had to interpret how to be a “good man”. Okonkwo’s self-interpretation leads him to conclude that a “good man” was...
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...English Dr. Swaralipi Nandi 18-09-2014 Theme of Colonialism in ‘Things Fall Apart’ Introduction : Poet and novelist Chinua Achebe was one of the most important Africanwriters. He was also considered by many to be one of the most original literary artists writing in English during his lifetime. He is best known for his novel Things Fall Apart (1958). Born Albert Chinualumogo Achebe, Chinua Achebe was raised by Christian evangelical parents in the large village Ogidi, in Igboland, Eastern Nigeria. He received an early education in English, but grew up surrounded by a complex fusion of Igbo traditions and colonial legacy. He studied literature and medicine at the University of Ibadan; after graduating, he went to work for the Nigerian Broadcasting Company in Lagos and later studied at the British Broadcasting Corporation staff school in London. During this time, Achebe was developing work as a writer. Starting in the 1950s, he was central to a new Nigerian literary movement that drew on the oral traditions of Nigeria's indigenous tribes. Although Achebe wrote in English, he attempted to incorporate Igbo vocabulary and narratives. Things Fall Apart (1958) was his first novel, and remains his best-known work. It has been translated into at least forty-five languages, and has sold eight million copies worldwide. Chinua Achebe’s “African Trilogy” : Things Fall Apart, No Longer at Ease, Arrow of God captures a society caught between...
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...Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe gives a vivid portrayal of the African society before colonialism, during colonialism and after colonialism. It is centered on a tragic hero, Okonkwo, whose aim for success and fear of weakness drives his entire life and eventually leads to his fall. Achebe uses Umoufia, a land surrounded with strong traditions and culture as the case study to depict the effects of culture clash on a land where “Things Fall Apart; the center cannot hold” (Achebe, 2009). The title of this book is symbolic to the turnout of events in the story and foreshadows the inability of Umoufia to resist the pressures of change. In the novel, we see a clash between cultures and change that leads to the fall of the Igbo society, a clan that used to be strong and powerful before the white people came. The Igbo people face a dilemma on whether to accept the change, keep their way of life or better still balance both worlds in one. The way Achebe presents the arrival of the colonists and their imposition of change on the Igbo Society raises some thought to me on the true intention of colonialism i.e. did they come to spread Christianity or to acquire the land? The rapid unfold of events in the novel makes me harness the latter view; they took the stronghold of the Igbo society i.e. religion, turned it into a weakness, in the name of change, to enable them exploit the land. One thing that held the society together was their religion/tradition and once the colonists introduced...
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...Things Fall Apart 3 layer response. Epictetus once said “First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.” Epictetus was a promoter of Stoicism who flourished in the early second century C.E. about four hundred years after the Stoic school of Zeno of Citium was established in Athens. He lived and worked, first as a student in Rome, and then as a teacher with his own school in Nicopolis in Greece. In Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, a man named Okonkwo and his choices in life are showcased. Okonkwo is a clear embodiment of the quote mentioned above. He is a man who works himself up from nothing and becomes something. The root cause of his actions throughout the novel are his subconscious feelings towards his Unoka, his father. The prevalent failures of Unoka fundamentally shapes Okonkwo’s actions as a husband and as a father. Okonkwo is a man who truly started from the bottom. He did not have the head start in life which many young men had and was plagued by the fear of weakness and failure (13,16). Despite his situation, he began during his father’s lifetime to build the foundations of a prosperous future (18). His father’s example shapes his character in a way that he becomes “possessed by the fear of his father’s contemptible life and shameful death” (18). In light of Unoka’s...
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...The Tragic Hero– A Common Thread of Two Colonialist Works Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart”and Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” are two well-established literary works stemming from colonialist efforts that overtook Africa in the 1890s. These works portray the conflict between Nigeria’s new-founded white colonial government and the traditional culture of the native African, Igbo people. Through analyzing main characters from each work, Okonkwo and Kurtz in both novels, respectively, portray the role of the tragic hero. Both are introduced in their stories as high-ranking characters, each corrupted by their individual, tragic flaws, which ultimately leads to their fall (or death). In considering their individual plotlines, Okonkwo, however, provides the best depiction of what the idealistic tragic hero ultimately encompasses. Three differences to be accounted for within this common framework include their difference in point-of-view in the storylines, and their resulting tragic flaws, where Okonkwo is a African man within the Igbo tribe; whereas, Kurtz is an upper-class, white European, who becomes obsessed in his exploitation of Africa for its resources, mainly ivory. Secondly, while both men could be considered civilized characters, who acted in abiding to the norms of the African community, Kurtz had more a invasive and corruptive, ’god-like’ power in the story which influenced the African peoples as a whole, where; on the other-hand, Okonkwo was portrayed as more of...
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...Which caused him to be in the public eye at a very juvenile age. Okonkwo, “was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond. His fame rested on solid personal achievements. As a young man of eighteen” (Achebe 3). At just eighteen years old, Okonkwo beat the number one wrestler who had gone unbeaten for seven years. This caused him to rise to fame. Achebe portrays Okonkwo as outwardly ridged and a dominant man, but lets his fear of becoming like his father, lazy, unsuccessful, and having feminine like qualities influence his life and the decisions he makes. This causes Okonkwo to work hard, become wealthy and portray masculine qualities. The immense success and fame Okonkwo achieved at a early age hurt him because that was the foundation he based all other successes off of. In the village of Umuofia, the elders and well respected and when they have opinions about something people tend to listen and agree with what they say, “It was this man that Okonkwo threw in a fight which the old men agreed was one of the fiercest since the founder of their town engaged a spirt of wild for seven days and seven nights” (Achebe 3). The elders in the villages are very well respected...
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...Salome Sutter. English 2309-700. DR Savic savic. 06/09/2014 Like Father Not Like Son. The Saying Like Father Like Son Is Not Always True. In Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart, we see different relationships between parents and their children. Women seem not to have so much value in leadership role since they can’t earn a title. They are married off to able men to bear children for the clan. We see the boy child being raised to take over after his father. Achebe has shown in great length the concept of father and son relationship to a deeper level. He has shown how a boy will always look up to his father for both positive and negative aspects. The grown adults have a choice to figure a path in their leadership. We mainly learn of Okonkwo the main character that hated everything about his father and chose to live his life the opposite. He put his whole energy into becoming his opposite. Unfortunately his oldest son, Nwoye who looked like his father Unoka was the opposite of him. Okonkwo is a great man in the village of Umuofia since he was 18 years old. He threw the cat in a wrestling fight. “As a young man of eighteen he had brought honor to his village by throwing Amalinze the Cat. Amalinze was the great wrestler who for seven years was unbeaten, from Umuofia to Mbaino.” (Achebe, Chapter 1 para 1) We are told that he continued to earn respect among his clansmen because no one had defeated the cat in seven years. Okonkwo worked so hard to be the opposite of his...
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...relationship with his father is presented, and how their relationship with their broader society -- the "these people" of the quote above -- is presented. Be succinct but use the novel, and you must NOT write more than two typed pages! Okonkwo, protagonist in Chinua Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart, is introduced to the reader as a young man born in Umofia, one of the many tribes populating late 19th century Africa. Okonkwo derives a grim satisfaction from being starkly different to his father Unoka; fortunately enough, his people judge a man "according to his worth and not according to the worth of his father", leaving him free to deviate from Unoka's reputation to forge his own. Where Okonkwo had acquired prestige at the youthful age of eighteen, his father was a man who had known no success. Okonkwo is depicted as an excellent fighter -- he even manages to overthrow a famous wrestler during a contest -- externally virile ("tall and huge" with a "severe look" and a habit for "breath[ing] heavily") while his father is described as "tall but very thin [with] a slight stoop". Where Okonkwo seems to radiate hostile energy, Unoka's face was frequently "beaming with happiness", yet is clearly stated to be a "failure", only paragraphs after Achebe comments on Okonkwo's "fame". Put simply, the idiom "like father, like son" could not be further from the truth, and the two generations are separated by an almost ludicrous gap. While the young man could accept his father's differences...
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...About Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe's college work sharpened his interest in indigenous Nigerian cultures. He had grown up in Ogidi, a large village in Nigeria. His father taught at the missionary school, and Achebe witnessed firsthand the complex mix of benefit and catastrophe that the Christian religion had brought to the Igbo people. In the 1950s, an exciting new literary movement grew in strength. Drawing on indigenous Nigerian oral traditions, this movement enriched European literary forms in hopes of creating a new literature, in English but unmistakably African. Published in 1958, Things Fall Apart is one of the masterpieces of 20th century African fiction. Things Fall Apart is set in the 1890s, during the coming of the white man to Nigeria. In part, the novel is a response and antidote to a large tradition of European literature in which Africans are depicted as primitive and mindless savages. The attitudes present in colonial literature are so ingrained into our perception of Africa that the District Commissioner, who appears at the end of the novel, strikes a chord of familiarity with most readers. He is arrogant, dismissive of African "savages," and totally ignorant of the complexity and richness of Igbo life. Yet his attitude echoes so much of the depiction of Africa; this attitude, following Achebe's depiction of the Igbo, seems hollow and savage. Digression is one of Achebe's most important tools. Although the novel's central story is the tragedy of Okonkwo...
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...Reading the Novel in English 1950–2000 i RTNA01 1 13/6/05, 5:28 PM READING THE NOVEL General Editor: Daniel R. Schwarz The aim of this series is to provide practical introductions to reading the novel in both the British and Irish, and the American traditions. Published Reading the Modern British and Irish Novel 1890–1930 Reading the Novel in English 1950–2000 Daniel R. Schwarz Brian W. Shaffer Forthcoming Reading the Eighteenth-Century Novel Paula R. Backscheider Reading the Nineteenth-Century Novel Harry E. Shaw and Alison Case Reading the American Novel 1780–1865 Shirley Samuels Reading the American Novel 1865–1914 G. R. Thompson Reading the Twentieth-Century American Novel James Phelan ii RTNA01 2 13/6/05, 5:28 PM Reading the Novel in English 1950–2000 Brian W. Shaffer iii RTNA01 3 13/6/05, 5:28 PM © 2006 by Brian W. Shaffer BLACKWELL PUBLISHING 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK 550 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia The right of Brian W. Shaffer to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs, and...
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