Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart (Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations (Hardcover))

Rating:
Summary: A Great Story by A Great Author!
Review: I'm taking a geography class and we have to write a paper on a writer from a developing country. From the list of books I chose to read this book by Chinua Achebe. I've just finished this book and I loved it. It is a story about one man who starts out with nothing and gains everything but at the end loses it all. Basically like the title, things just fall apart for this one man.

Okonkwo is this man who is known as one of the greatest men who ever lived in the Umuofia clan. As a young man (18 years old) he started his great legacy by becoming the greatest Wrestler of the nine villages of Umuofia. In their culture, those who are strong were the most commended. For a boy who was born into a household, which had no title and no honor, he became a leader. Okonkwo hated his father for being a weak man who only went into debt and died poor. He wanted to set a good example to his sons and become a real man who can support his family and gain respect from others. While he was only becoming more and more powerful suddenly he is put into exile for accidentally killing a clansmen's daughter (a bullet from his gun accidentally goes off). For seven years he lives with his mother's clansmen with his family. During those seven years, the white men come and take over his clansmen of Umuofia. They come and try to break their traditions and convert them to the english ways. They force the people to praise their "god" and queen. When Okonkwo returns with his family, he is shocked at the incredible change Umuofia has undergone. He tries to lead others into fighting the white men and taking back their land and culture. When he sees that his warriors become nothing but weak "women" (he considers any man who is weak as a woman) he tries to go on fighting them on his own. But his broken heart is what kills him at the end. Such a strong willed person with many achievements yet dominated with fear and anger of becoming weak drives him to his death.

I personally love reading african literature (I think they are very interesting than other literature i've read). You learn folklore, cultures, social interactions, and other interesting stuff. This book is one of the most creative literatures i've ever read. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone.

Rating:
Summary: A World Classic
Review: In this compact novel, Chinua Achebe has packed a story on the level of Greek tragedy, of the tipping point in African tribal life when the white man comes, from the perspective of Okonkwo, a man for whom tribal life has worked seamlessly. Achebe devotes the extended first part of the book to episodic accounts of village life, portraying a very complex agrarian culture with remarkably integrated economic, social, religious and political systems. Okonkwo is the ambitious son of an unambitious man. He overcame his inauspicious birthright and lives prosperously with three wives and several children. Their daily life is rendered vividly in Achebe's rhythmic, economic style. Misfortune befalls Okonkwo in a moment's accident at the end of part one, but tribal custom has a way of taking care of him, sending him and his family in exile to his mother's village for seven years. He spends the years anxiously awaiting the time to return to the life he enjoyed, ignoring the harbingers of change that arrive in the person of the first missionary. When he at last returns to the life he left behind, it is no what he had remembered, understood and cherished.

For this contemporary reader, THINGS FALL APART served as a fine contemplation of character and conflict, of an international historical phenomenon from the individual's experience, of the problems of change and chance. It also offered a fresh reading of Yeat's poem, "The Second Coming," from which the title is taken. I regret this was not assigned in my education; I hope educators are encouraging high school and college students to read it today. It's the type of book that makes you love literature and reading.

Rating:
Summary: Good but dull
Review: This book is a required reading for high school and I didn't know what to think when I finished the book. The writing was unique and the story is depressing but it does send out a good message about fear and how it takes over one's life. I liked it all in all but some of the things I didn't need to hear. For example, stories about murdering twins and then throwing them in the woods? That's very frightening