By Muluken Aseffa
Feb, 2011
Everyday people look for success. There is no doubt that if we try hard for what we look or achieve for, then we can succeed. Throughout the journey of success, sometimes there are some failure occurs. We don’t always succeed at what we look for. The main reason for this is due to the major differences that human experience. Some of those different prospective that challenges human being are; culture difference, language barrier, and norm and religion differences. These premises are the major issue that success and failure depends on. In the book, Things Fall Apart, we see how things fall apart in the life of Okonkwo. He has been straggling with fear and failure throughout his life. As we read through the book we will see how the author expresses the life of Okonkwo and his aggressiveness, temper, and the lack of diversity lead him to failure and how his and his family’s life affected.
In the first place Okonkwo’s respect for his tribal/ethnic tradition is expressed in his everyday life. Even though the perception and ambition of Okonkwo is different from other people (like his father) in the community, his ethnic tradition is expressed by his power and aggressiveness. The life of Okonkwo, his beliefs, and norm is somewhat reckless. His bad temper puts him and his family in danger. In the most part, the aggressiveness and the temper of Okonkwo is very disturbing. For example, to create any kind of anger towards the community and to his family, he uses the banana tree as an excuse. However, the main reason for his anger comes from his fear. He has a very strong fear of losing his leadership. That is why he hates his father so much. That is the reason that he punishes his wife and his son. For him, losing is an embarrassment and shame.
In the second case, the value system of the Umuofia people is very traditional and they have received the culture from their ancestors. Everyone in the community loved the way they live until the foreigners came and disturbed the people and their environment. The Umuofia people are a people who had not had a leader or a king who leads the community like other tribes. They are totally independent. They are peaceful people who respect their culture, norm, religion and family. However, they are always scared of magic or anything that relates to magic. For example, during the conflict with their neighbors, they were very concerned about what the consequences could be if they attacked the neighbor people who have magical protection.
They are peaceful people who respect their culture, norms, religion and family. In ancient human civilizations, historians predicted that the “Noble people” had a low amount of military equipment. This implies that the Noble people were a peaceful people. Like the Noble people, the Umuofia people were peaceful people.
When we come to Okonkwo’s aspiration as a leader of his people, he is a strict man who believes in power. When he was young he had beaten “The Cat” and became popular in his community. He is a prominent leader to his community. Because of his personal character and perception of hating a loser, he doesn’t like or appreciate any man who has feminine characteristics. He demands the males should be powerful individuals who would lead the community. Because of his macho mind set, he used to wish his daughter was a male.
On the other hand, Okonkwo is a great wrestler or fighter in the nine villages. He is a great farmer who had three wives and also had two barns that is used for storage, full of vegetables called yams. So, his aspiration as a leader is to become a powerful man by becoming the greatest wrestler and then becoming a wealthier person so that he could get respect from his people. Even though the elderly people are well respected in his tribe, if there is a man who is a hero, the hero can sit and discuss the tribes’ different issues.
In the forth case, there are some major concerns of the effects of the British on the local way of life. At any time, if a person or group of people come to a new, different place and face a different culture, norm, religion, and race, there will be the presence of culture shock and also a language barrier. That is exactly what happened to the Umuofia people. As the British people; missionaries came into the Umuofia community, they did not understand and respect the culture and the norms of the people. The first thing that they were supposed to do was learning the Umuofia culture, language, norms, and other things. Also they should investigate or assess the good and bad things for the people, so that they can overcome the risk factors of the Umuofia people. As we know, there are bad cultures that sacrifice human beings and also there are good cultures that the world could learn and benefit from. Instead, the British missionaries considered the Umuofia as a minority people who were uneducated. The missionaries aggressively forced their own will on the community. Also, they distributed the modern education throughout the cities and the country so that the people can lost their identity and culture.
The main targeted audiences were Umuofia young people. These young adults started learning the modern lifestyle and religion of the other world instead of keeping the culture and norms of their own. So, the elderly people of the Umuofia tribe couldn’t pass their culture and traditional lifestyle to their young children, because the young adults started refusing and neglecting the traditional lifestyle. This caused devastation to the community.
Over all, from Achebe’s novel, “Things Fall Apart”, I have learned how things fall apart due to several reasons. Extreme power, lack of understanding, bad decisions and cultural differences cause the loss of one culture. So, cultural aggressiveness can devastate people’s person’s life. To reduce all the above risk factors we have to understand, the norms, culture, religion, identity and the communities’ lifestyle.
