CMLIT Response paper number 3

Harrison Wolff

Based on my reading of Things Fall Apart, some of the major cultural

components of a classical Igbo world view are that yams, and many other factors
such as amount of wives and amount of children and even titles given in the tribe
are some of the major cultural components of the classical Igbo world view. I think
that it is also very important to factor in that also some of the other important things
to consider is how much that they care about there ancestors and how much it
matters to them. That if they do something to upset their gods and or they do
something that violates one of the rules of the tribe, then they have to give
something up and have to go through a lot of sacrifices. Some of the major forces
that govern the Igbo people are like what I said before they are governed by gods
and are also governed by the spirits of there ancestors. And they must follow the
rules set down by them.
Okonko represented an ideal Igbo male in that he was manly/ strong/ tough
and was very forceful when he talked. He was a fighter and was his villages
wrestling champ and was looked up to by everyone and even the elders of the
village. But he is not with his faults, he thinks that he must do everything so that he
does not apperar weak like how he considers his father to be so he tries and does a
lot of things to not end up like his father. “Even as a little boy he had resented his
father’s failure and weakness, and even now he still remembered how he had
suffered when a playmate had told him that his father was agbala.”(Things Fall
Apart) He first off kills his adopted son because he was told to and he did not want
to be see as weak so even though they said he could not kill him out of not showing
any weakness he killed the kid anyways. “As the man who had cleared his throat
drew up and raised his machete, Okonkwo looked away. He heard the blow. The pot
fell and broke in the sand. He heard Ikemefuna cry, “My father, they have killed me!”
as he ran towards him. Dazed with fear, Okonkwo drew his machete and cut him
down. He was afraid of being thought weak.”(Things Fall Apart) So witht that being
said he is an over exaggeration, because he has no feelings at all even though it is not
likely to happen in real life, everyone has them and that he tries and thinks that
weakness is showed by showing mercy to people he would be definitely be
mistaken. Another way is that not every Igbo person had the same ideals as
okonkwo like his father was content being the person that he was and did not have
to change who he was to be happy and content. Even though he did not have all the
wives and all the yams, he was still content with just him and his music.
The things that fall apart in this novel are the rituals and the practices that
the Igbo people show throughout the book, they turn away from the old practices
and take up Christianity and take up the ideals of the white settlers that come in and
settle the land in the area of Africa. So in the end the things that end up changing are
things that okonkwo cannot control and event though he thinks that he can it fails,
he ends up killing a messanger and then when he relizes that the people are not
with him, he gives upa dn kills himself seeing nothing that he would want in the
forseeable future.