Things Fall Apart : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: School Project
Review: Throughout most of "Things Fall Apart" Achebe describes the many traditions, rituals, and everyday happenings that occur in the villages of Ummuofia. For instance yams are of very high importance in the village, they even have yam festivals. Some of their beliefs seem strange, such as the belief in digging up a stone to cure an ogbanje, a dead child who returns to the other to be reborn. Others seem to coincide with our own laws, such as punishment for murder and distinction between murder and manslaughter. The main character, Okonkwo, accidentally commits murder and so he and his family are banished from the clan for seven years. After his banishment the "white men" come to his village. They are Christians who come with churches to try and convert the "heathens", but they also come with guns.

While the beginning of the book focused mainly on the many rituals of the clan, its was still quite interesting to read. Many of their ways seemed to coincide with ours. The way to treat iba, the fever, was to use medicinal steam and today the same idea is used in Vicks® humidifiers. Of course other remedies seem stranger, like digging up a rock to cure constant miscarriage, which surprisingly worked. It seemed the whole beginning half of the book was to slowly pull you into the story and have you feel you were part of the village. Around the fifteenth chapter the book begins to talk about the "white men" and the attempts the early church made to gain followers. This was the most exciting part of the book, especially the unrest in the villages building up until the people find that they must determine what to do now.

Outside of the book I would immediately say that imperialism hurt the Africans. However "Things Fall Apart" seems to portray other sides of imperealism. The District Commisioner and his aides seem as mean and horrible as you would expect them to be. Yet the missionaries seem much more . For instance Mr. Kiaga accepts osu, or outcasts, into the church and Mr. Brown sat with villagers to learn about their Gods and traditions. Even when the villagers assaulted some of the converts, the missionaries told them to be patient and not fight back. Aside from the ultimate suicide of Okonkwo, imperialism overall helped the people of Ibo.