Things Fall Apart Essay, Research Paper

All the cultures in a bigger or smaller grade had always been under the possibility of colonization. Even today where there is a greater control and knowledge about the territories we still see some powerful country trying to colonize other. In the book by Chinua Achebe “Things Fall Apart” we see how the English people in the name of the Queen of England try to colonize small African villages. We have been talking about colonization, but what is colonization? We can define colonization as the appropriation of lands that belong to someone else by force, and the introduction of the foreign culture to the one already existing there. In this book what Achebe wants to show us is that is possible to change a whole culture just by introducing a new one. If we analyze the book we see that the African village had its own structure and rules. Everyone in the village respected those rules even the most powerful men in the village. When Okonkwo shoots accidentally the old’ s dead man daughter he has to leave the village, even thought he was one of the nine who run that village. There were no excuses, nor corruption, nor a way to escape, if someone did something wrong that someone have to pay no matter whom he was. He tries to show us how the original culture of the village was, how the women were treated and how men were in charge of everything. He shows us that the more you work and the stronger you were the more important you were. We can see this very clear in the analogy of Okonkwo’ s father and Okonkwo. His father hardly worked, he was not a strong man, and therefore he was not respected and owed lots of money to everyone in the village. On the other side Okonkwo was a warrior, hardworking man. Everyone in the village respected him and he was one of the wealthiest men also. This kind of culture and social life was very characteristic of African villages in colonization times. Achebe wants to show us how is that a culture can be changed from one day to another, and he really represents what happens. The first thing that is worth naming is when Okonkwo’ s son joins the missionaries. Even though Okonkwo prohibited his son to go there, his son couldn’t resist it, going against all the villages’ principles and mainly against his father. His father very mad disinherit him showing his son he disapproved completely what he did, and he also does this to show his other children what would happen to them if they go with the missionaries. The second thing that we can see that changes everything is the matter of religion. The missionaries try to convince the people from Umuofia that the gods that they where worshipping were not real, and that there was only one god. The people of Umuofia showed a great discontent since they couldn’t believe that someone that came from some other place was telling them that the gods they worshipped generation after generation did not exist.