4/30/11
History 422
Essay 2
Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God and Pa Chin’s Family both tell the story of two very different communities dominated by the presence of western influence.
The nature of traditional life and customs in the Nigerian village of Umuaro differ greatly from those of the western world. The Igbo people worship a very different system of beliefs than those of which other cultures are familiar with. They pray to several gods, including Ulu and Idemili, and believe animals, such as the royal python, to be sacred. The people of Umuaro conduct celebrations in relation to the harvest, including the Festival of Pumpkin Leaves and the Festival of the New Yam. According to the Igbo, yams are the most important crop and also represent qualities of manhood. Yams are heavily relied upon as a major food source of these people.
In Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God, Oduche, Ezeulu’s son, is heavily attracted to the Christian religion. This is especially shown to be true when he attempts to deliver upon a request to kill the sacred python. Oduche’s attraction to Christianity is due to him being sent to the Christian church upon request. The python is one of the most sacred symbols of the traditional religion of Umuaro. Although they have embraced Christianity, all others refuse due to the religious devastation of such a sacrilegious act. Oduche does not kill the royal python, but instead captures it in a box. “Ezeulu waited for it to calm down a little, bent down and carried the box outside” (Achebe 44). Upon discovering what Oduche has done, Ezuelu is shocked that his son could commit such an abomination unto the Igbo religion. “Before midday the story had reached the ears of Ezidemili whose deity, Idemili, owned the royal python” (Achebe 45). After learning of this, Ezidemili demands Ezuelu to purify his household for the actions of Oduche.
You May Also Find These Documents Helpful
-
Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart is the story of an Ibo tribe before and during the arrival of white missionaries. The main character, Okonkwo, is a highly respected man within his society who slowly falls in esteem as the story goes on. He involves himself in more and more conflicts with the people around him, including an ongoing battle of impossibly high standards for his son Nwoye, who decides to leave his family in the end for the Anglican Church. The warrior archetype Okonkwo is too rooted in his ways to survive marginalization, but his son Nwoye understands his only choice and resolves the doomed father-son conflict by abandoning his own culture.…
- 687 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
As the white men moved into the Igbo's land, their culture, values and their beliefs changed. These changes were extremely evident, but in the end the Igbo were unable to doing anything to stop the changes that had already start taking place in their society. As soon as the whites arrived, they introduced a new religion that was completely different than the natives were accustomed to. The white man told the Igbos that, “they worshipped false gods, gods of wood and stone,” (145) also, he mentioned that there was only one God, the creator of everything. Okonkwo was convinced that the man was entirely wrong, but his first son, Nwoye, had been captivated by all of these new ideas, and after a discussion with his father, “Nwoye decided to go to Umuofia where missionaries had a school to teach, to read and write the new Christians. (152)” “He was happy to leave his father to follow the missionaries. (152)” Indeed, Nwoye was not the only one convinced by the new form of religion, but also other natives, and some of them turned away from everything they were, just to be part of it. Before colonialism, the unit of the family was very important in the Igbo culture, but with the arrival of missionaries and their religion the division among families began. Sons, wives, and daughters separated voluntarily from their family to follow the new form of religion, even clans could no longer act as…
- 833 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart exemplifies two sharply contrasting sides of the impact that religion can have on a society, being its ability to unify and segregate the people of a community. In the book’s first part, religion acts as the glue holding together the structure of Ibo society: it is the basis that helps to found the society’s rituals, moral code, and gender roles. Religion’s position as the leading authority in the tribe also helps to communicate a major theme in the book: the idea that society determines what is worthy of respect. Yet, in parts two and three of the book, the introduction of another religion, Christianity, to the tribe of Umuofia divides the Ibo people and creates immense controversy. Furthermore, even though there are major similarities in the religion of the Ibo and Christianity, the various more minor…
- 621 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
Hunt, Lynn, Thomas R. Martin, Barbara H. Rosenwien, R. Po-Chia Hsia, and Bonnie G. Smith. The Making of the West; Peoples and Cultures. Vol. 1. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin 's, 2003.…
- 2304 Words
- 10 Pages
Powerful Essays -
In Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, the Ibo culture is depicted as a civilized society…
- 859 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
Achebe depicts the Igbo as a people with great social institutions. Their culture is rich and impressively civilized, with traditions and laws that place great emphasis on justice and fairness. The people are ruled not by a king or chief but by a kind of simple democracy, in which all males gather and make decisions by consensus. Ironically, it is the Europeans, who often boast of bringing democratic institutions to the rest of the world, who try to suppress these clan meetings in Umuofia.…
- 3934 Words
- 21 Pages
Good Essays -
When Mr. Brown, the missionary, comes to the village of Umuofia to spread the word of God to the Ibo Clan, he met Akunna. Mr. Brown and Akunna has a conversation about their differences in religion, Akunna telling Mr. Brown that the Ibo Clan believes in one supreme God but had others that they worship, the name of their God is Chucku, because "he made all the world and not other Gods." Akunna also mentions to Mr. Brown that they also worship carved wood, "they tree from which it came was made by Chukwu, as indeed other minor God were" Akunna tells Mr. Brown that the Ibo religion "make sacrifices to the little gods, but when all else fails there is no one to turn to they go to Chuckw." (180)…
- 912 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
Of the many themes that appear in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, individuality versus nationality becomes a central topic as the story progresses and develops. With the invasion and colonization of the European missionaries, Okonkwo’s nationality and contributions to society are called into question. Achebe explains the idea of nationality over individuality by showing that society is the precursor to individuality. Examining the life of the protagonist, Okonkwo, before and after his resistance exemplifies this key idea in Things Fall Apart.…
- 831 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
Hunt, Lynn, Thomas Martin, Barbara Rosenwein, R. Po-chia Hsia, Bonnie Smith. The Making of the West: Peoples and Cultures. 3Rd ed. Boston, New York: Bedford/St. Martin 's, 2009. Print.…
- 890 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
In the novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, the cultural collision caused by the introduction of Western ideas into Igbo culture majorly affected are of the Igbo tribes greatest men, Okonkwo, in the way that he was conflicted with his sense of identity and struggled to fit in between the changes of accepting new ideas and staying with his common traditions. Before the arrival of the Europeans, the Igbo people thrived and peacefully lived among themselves; Okonkwo was a strong male warrior who wished to be seen as profoundly masculine and successful. With the arrival of the new culture, Okonkwo felt immensely conflicted, he lived to challenge the Europeans and all his thoughts along with what he spoke was directed against the newly arrived Christians. His unwillingness to change and accept the new culture left him with consequences to pay for. Through Okonkwo, Achebe shows the constant struggle between changing and staying with old traditions.…
- 1122 Words
- 5 Pages
Good Essays -
The religion of Christianity is the belief that Jesus Christ is god. Jesus lived somewhere between 4 and 30 BCE and was from Nazareth. Jesus was brought up an orthodox Jew and was born into a bit of a higher class family. Jesus became a Jewish teacher and was said to give a message of hope and moral demands. He was executed somewhere around 30BCE by the roman crowed and was crucified. After his death his body reportedly went pissing from his tomb and people began to believe that he must have been raised from the dead by god and further believed that he would come back to save his followers. There were many reasons that influenced Christianity in western civilization. There were three people who had a lot to do with the growth of Christianity and they were Paul or the Apostle Paul, Constantine who was an emperor of Rome and Theodosius who was also an emperor of Rome but took the beliefs of Constantine even further.…
- 490 Words
- 2 Pages
Satisfactory Essays -
“Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay” – Jiddu Krishnamurti. Things Fall Apart is an English-language novel written by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe that was published in 1958 by William Heinemann Ltd. In Things Fall Apart the Umuofia tribesmen refuse to change and show this through killing a fellow tribesmen, an English messenger, and eventually their own death. My arguments will show that Chinua Achebe uses the elements of a tragic hero to support the theme of the struggle between change and tradition in Things Fall Apart.…
- 741 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
The Igbo people were a highly religious and close knitted community, at least when it came to their own particular clans and tribes. They relied heavily on their farming and looked upon the strongest farmers as those blessed by the gods and carrying a good chi (Achebe, 17). By the late 1800’s however, the Igbo people came into contact with British colonialism and soon their culture and beliefs began to spread thinly among the few who remained true to their gods and superstitions. The reason for the great fragmentation of the Igbo people came about because they were always a fragmented group spread out into dozens of different Igbo clans (Miers, 437), their strong belief that the gods would intervene in the blasphemous was of the missionaries, and the missionaries use of medicine to keep the “destructive power” of the Ibgo gods at bay, making those very gods they relied on so heavily seem powerless against “the albinos.”…
- 1171 Words
- 5 Pages
Good Essays -
A family is a group of people who help and care for each other and will stay together. In this generation many people do not have a blood related family. Families can be made with other relatives and friends. Families are the people to help when they are in need and have no one else to turn too. In the book, “Reviving Ophelia: saving the selves of adolescent girls,” the author, Mary Pipher is trying to say that the community as a whole is the reason why so many families are so broken, but some people still manage to have families of their own.…
- 978 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
In Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe intends to inform readers about the values and ethics of being an African during a period of Eurocentrism. Many European and Western nations were focused on “discovering” new land to seize, many using “gold, god, and glory” to further excuse the dehumanization of people and cultural genocide. Specifically, religion plays a powerful role by shedding light on a single ideology which creates a division amongst groups of people, thereby destroying the customs of the oppressed society and the individual. In Umuofia, conflict arises when the polytheistic faith of the Igbo people is challenged by the Christian beliefs of the aggressive missionaries. Paying respects to their gods provided the Igbo with ties to their rich ancestral history and was connected to many of their sacred traditions, some involving farming and governing techniques. Therefore, because such religious behaviours were embedded in their culture so deeply, for some, it created a sense of pride that would not be easily diminished nor deflected. Achebe presents an ironic depiction of colonialism when the prideful missionaries were determined to persuade some of the people…
- 1215 Words
- 5 Pages
Good Essays