Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart brilliantly relates to the reader the story of one man's life and chronicles its disintegration. This man's name is Okonkwo; it is his journey and his trials that are followed, most significantly those in which he interacts with his family. From the beginning, the book explains his relationship with his father and the shame stemming from his father's lack of self-respect and actions. Achebe creates Okonkwo as a character whose background affects his choices further in the story. For instance, Okonkwo takes in a boy, Ikemefuna, who lived in another village, and soon grows attached to him as a son.
[...] Education was one of the missions of this new church, and they opened schools were all people could learn and then use their skills for the advancement of the church. Perhaps those who valued the very things that the new church went against were threatened, but were afraid to do anything because the white people had more technologies on their side. I enjoyed that this book described a culture that I had never learned of before and gave me the tools needed to think about the way two different societies may view each other. Things Fall Apart allowed me to understand that in [...]
[...] Growing up with his father and having to see the way that his society viewed his father played a great role in the way Okonkwo placed value on different aspects of his life. He, for example, believed that the most essential aspect of his life was to gain titles from his village. In lieu of spending time with his family, he spent time working on his farm. In fact, he was relied on working on his farm to distract him from his problems or from having to deal with his emotions (Achebe 64). [...]
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