The Power Struggle in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart Essay examples

The Power Struggle in Chinua Achebes Things Fall isolatedChinua Achebes Things Fall away is a powerful novel ab out(p) the companionable changes that occur personnel casualty when the snow-clad serviceman first arrived on the African continent. The novel is found on a conception of humans as self-reflexive beings and a exposition of culture as a set of control mechanisms. Things Fall Apart is the story of Okonkwo, an elder, in the Igbo tribe. He is a fairly successful man who earned the respect of the tribal elders. The story of Okonkwos fall from a respected member of the tribe to an outcast who dies in disgrace graphically dramatizes the struggle between the altruistic values of Christianity and the lust for power that move European colonialism in Africa and undermined the indigenous culture of a nation.Okonkwos father was laughed at by the villagers, and was conside cherry a ill luck. However, this was not true of Okonkwo, who lived in a lowly home. Okonkwos prosperity was visible in his household. He had a large multiform enclosed by a thick wall of red earth. His proclaim hut, or obi, stood immediately behind the only gate in the red walls. Each of his three wives had their own hut, which together formed a fractional moon behind the obi. The barn was built against one end of the red walls, and long stacks of yams stood out prosperously in it.Unfortunately, the clash of the cultures that occurs when the purity mans missionaries come to Africa in an attempt to convert the tribal members, causes Okonkwo to lash out at the white man and results in his banishment from the tribe. Okonkwo had a pestiferous temper which he often disp specifyed Okonkwo ruled his household with a arduous hand. His wives, especially the youngest, lived in perpetual terror of his fiery temper, and so did his critical children. Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a barbarian man. But his whole life was dominated by fear of failure and of weakness.The cracks within Okonkwos character are not so much out-of-door as internal, manifestations of those aspects of his being that have been his greatest strengths acting without thinking neer showing any emotion besides anger inflexibility fear of being perceived as weak and, therefore, womanly. Slowly, these characteristics that have served Okonkwo so good in the past, begin to alter the direction of his life. The first such adventure occurs when Okonkwo accidentally breaks the W... ...s return to Umuofia at the end of his exile when he returns home. The white men send their a messenger to the village. Okonkwo is still enraged most Nwoyes conversion. He sprang to his feet as soon as he saw who it was. He confronted the head messenger, trembling with hate, unable to utter a word. The man was unflinching and stood his ground, his four men lined up behind him. In a flash Okonkwo drew his machete. . . . Okonkwos machete descended twice and the mans head lay beside his uniformed body (204). In the end it is Okonkwos inability to contend change that specialitys him to commit suicide. It is the white missionaries inability to recognize that the Africans did not hankering to change which adds to his demise. The missionaries represent the ruthlessness of the white man in Africa. The endemic Africans were expected to accept the ways of the white culture, for their own benefit, or put up the consequences. In this light the missionaries can only be seen as brutal, and anything only if true Christians, but rather religious zealots who like Okonkwo wish to force their world view upon others. Works CitedAchebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. New York Anchor Books, 1959.