Topic: Depiction of Ibo society in Things Fall Apart Department of English Language and Literature, Islamic International University,

Islamabad

The Igbo society

Things Fall Apart by Chinva Achebe is a beautiful cultural depiction of the igbo society. Chinva Achebe represented the systematic and organized culture of the people of Africa. Their culture and life was portrayed as quite civilized being divided into beliefs, customs, rituals, songs etc, along with a proper juridical system. The characteristics of the igbo society are briefly explained below: The people of the igbo society believed in a number of gods. They had a separate god for each thing.. e.g Ani was the earth Godess it had a priest which worked for her. When Okonkwo disobeyed the week of peace Ani sent Ezeani, the priest, to punish Okonkwo. Ani was not only the earth goddess but she also judged people, She was the ultimate judge of morality and conduct. The people of the igbo society arranged a festival at the harvest of their crop to honor the goddess of earth and the ancestral spirits. Ani was greatly cared about because the harvest wholly

and solely depended upon her as she was the source of all fertility . people also believed in chi which was the personal god.

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The people of igbo society had a strong belief in the oracles. Whenever people faced any difficulty they went to the oracle of Agbala for consultation. People came to the Oracle of Agabla to know what the future held for them or to consult the spirits of their departed fathers. The priestess of Agabla was Chika who was full of the power of her god and she was greatly feared. The people of the igbo society also believed in the Oracle of the Hills and the Caves . Umuofia was powerful in war and magic yet it was the oracle who made the decisions regarding wars. The tribe, never went to war unless its case was clear and just and was accepted as such by its Oracle the Oracle of the Hills and the Caves.. The priestess of the oracle of the hills and the caves was Chielo. The belief in the oracles was so strong that people feared disobeying it. Thats why Umuofia didnt fight Mbaino, when a daughter of Umuofia was killed by Mbaino, because the oracle disapproved it. The punishment of disobeying the oracle was that, if the clan had disobeyed the Oracle they would surely have been beaten. Later on in the novel we observed that the oracle of the Hills and the Caves pronounced that Okonkwo should kill Ikemefuna. Okonkwo obeyed the Oracle even after knowing the fact that the boy considered him as his father. Igbo society had a highly organized system of customs. some of the customs were: in the 9 clans of the igbo the art of leading a conversation was highly appreciated and regarded. Proverbial language was loved by its people, among the ibo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm oil with which words are eaten. People greatly feared darkness, so much so that they didnt go out of their homes at night time. It was the custom of the people that whenever they had to gather people for a meeting then a person would sound the oegene. Gome , gome, gome, gome, boomed the hollow metal then the crier gave his message. In the igbo culture songs and story telling also held great importance. One of the customs was the setting of the bride price. The bride price was set according to the beauty of the bride. It was set in the form of sticks , each stick representing a bag of cowries. it was the custom of the society that when a person committed a crime then he was sent to his motherland. Okonkwo killed one of his kinsmen by mistake. it was a crime against the goddess of earth to kill a clansman, and a man who committed it must flee from the land. Okonkwos belongings were burnt after him and he was banished from his land for seven years. It was the custom of the people that anyone who took away his own life , was not buried by his own clansmen. Sacrifices were given to the gods to cleanse the land from the sin done by the suicide committer. Thats why Okonkwo was not buried by his clansmen when he died, despite of the fact that he was among the leaders of the clan.

Among the religious beliefs and customs, one of them was that royal python was considered as a holy animal. The animal was allowed to go anywhere and was addressed as our father. It was considered a really great crime to kill this animal even by mistake. if a clansman killed a royal python accidently, he made sacrifices of atonement and performed an expensive burial ceremony such as was done for a great man. However the punishment of the one who killed the animal intentionally was not defined. The reason was that it was beyond he thought of people that anyone would do such an evil act. It was also considered as a great crime, from the religious point of view, to unmask an egwugwu in public, or to say or do anything which might reduce its immortal prestige in the eyes of the uninitiated. The people of the igbo society were also too much hospitable. Whenever a guest came the host used to give him a koala nut to break and then they prayed for the visitors prosperity. It was the belief of the people that some children are the evil ones. They die and then enter again in to their mothers bodies to torment them. These children were called as Ogbanje. Ekwefi bore ten children , all of them died died except Enzima. She was also an evil spirit but later on after great struggle Enzima told the secret of her life. It was a custom to bury these Ogbanje children in the evil forest. It was the traditional practice of the people to leave those people who had serious diseases in the evil forest to die.the sickness was an abomination to the earth, and so the victim could not be buried in her bowels. Unoka was also left in the evil forest to die because his stomach and limbs swelled.An evil forest was therefore, alive with sinister forces and powers of darkness. Twins were also considered as evil so the moment twins were born to someone they were thrown in the evil forest. Igbo society was acephalous kind of society, in which the success of a person depends upon his own achievements. The acephalous nature of the society became vivid when the narrator said that, his fame rested on solid personal achievements. He paved way for his success from the very start by himself by throwing the wrestler who had not been beaten for seven years. Okonkwos father was a lazy person and was a failure yet Okonkwo was never judged according to his father. The tradition among those people was that, a man was judged according to his worth and not according to the worth of his father. Achievement was given so much importance that age became secondary to achievement, age was respected among his people, but achievement was revered. And to get achievements people of the society used to sacrifice extensively so as to please the gods and the ancestors. It was a ritual of the people to celebrate the ceremony of the harvest of New Yams. On the night before the harvest the yams of the previous year were disposed of so that the New Year must be started with the fresh yams. On this festival people invited a large number of people. The first day of the festival was the day of eating,

drinking and rejoicing. On the second day the biggest wrestling contest was held. On both days people rejoiced and indulged in merriment. The igbo society had a well defined and an organized system of law or juridical system. Whenever a dispute arose egwugwu was called in the evil forest. Egwugwu consisted of nine ancestral spirit each spirit representing a clan. The egwugwu addressed the human beings by calling them Bodies. In response both sides of the case touched their right hand on the ground as a sign of submission. Afterwards both parties presented their case to egwugwu and egwugwu would give the final decision which was to be obeyed. In the novel we observed that the case of a husband and wife was brought to the egwugu. The husband said that his in laws took by force his wife and they also beat him. He waited for her to return but she didnt come back. The husband went to them and asked his in-laws to return the bride price but they refused. The wifes side said that the husband used to beat her severely. One day she was beaten so much that she would have died if her neighbors wouldnt have come to save her. So the wife ran away to save her life. The egwugwu consulted with each other after listening to both sides and finally gave its orders. It ordered the husband to go to his in laws with a pot of wine and beg her wife to come back. While it ordered the wife to go with his husband if he comes to take her back. In this way the issue was resolved. In a nutshell the igbo society was a very organized society. The cultural components of the society were rituals, belief in gods, customs, a cephalous society, the juridical system etcChinva Achebe has successfully presented that how civilized the people of the igbo society were.