Chinua Achebe s Things Fall Apart - 1462 Words

Things Fall Apart is a 1958 novel and literary work by Chinua Achebe, a Nigerian Author. The novel depicts the rural life in small Nigerian fictional village just before the white missionaries and colonizers landed into Nigeria. In the novel, Achebe explores the challenges that the local ‘Umuofia’ faced due to a sudden cultural imposition from the Europeans. The novel is also a representative of the wider picture of African cultures and the socio-economic changes that characterized the colonial era. Ideally, Achebe’s literary work shows clearly that the colonization, introduction of a foreign religion and foreign cultures threatened to tear apart the indigenous cultures of the Igbo people (Achebe, 154). Again, Achebe effectively draws the†¦show more content†¦The Pre-colonial Igbo Achebe documents the traditions of the Igbo society as one whose culture had dignity, glory, and solemnity. The Igbo society had well established traditions, ideals, gods, goddesses, language, rituals, songs, dances and taboos. At the same time, the Igbo people lived in love, peace and happiness. Moreover, the Igbo people were full of health, grace, and well-being and their gods would always come to their rescue when they called upon them during the hour of need. Another characteristic of the traditional Igbo society was the strong sense of community that the people had. Whenever a dispute arose, the people would gather for inter-village meetings where the village elders would mediate peace and reconciliation processes (Achebe, 352). Traditionally, the Igbo people had no centralized governing authority such as a powerful chief. Instead of having centralized body, the society was divided into small groups so that the power would be dispersed rather than being concentrated. Patrilineag e, the basic social unit, occupied several compounds or homesteads of closely related families. Within each compound, there was a house for the household man, his wives, and the male adult children. A number of families made a lineage that occupied a hamlet compound. In addition, several hamlets would make a village, an autonomous unit. A cluster of