DTC375 Blog post 3

Part 1 of Things Fall Apart by C. Achebe

This book Things Fall Apart has given me a lot to think about Nigerian culture. My first impressions of the main character Okonkwo were not great to begin with, but as I got through more of the book, I disliked him even less. He is a man that is constantly filled with anger and on more than one occasion he has beaten his wives completely unnecessarily. The first occasion being when his second wife didn’t come home in time after doing her hair to make him dinner. This resulted in him beating her during a week that is supposed to be sacred and peaceful. The second time was when another one of his wives picked off all the leaves of a banana tree to wrap some of the yams in, and he accused her of killing the tree. He then beat her relentlessly and took out a gun and tried to shoot her. The way that the author describes Okonkwo makes his sound like a successful and almost powerful man in the tribe but his domestic life is completely ruthless and it makes me very much dislike the character. I do understand that there was a reason that Okonkwo came out this way. Achebe describes a childhood that is not so great due to Okonkwo’s father who was a lazy drunk who was in a significant amount of debt. Because of his father’s shortcomings, Okonkwo had to grow up at a young age just so his family could make it by. Okonkwo resented his father’s weakness and swore to never tolerate weekness of his own or even the weakness of others.  This however, is not an excuse for the way that he speaks to other people and how he treats his family.

Another thing that I have noted from the book so far was that the agriculture is very important to the tribe. So much so that here are yam festivals and the topic of the yam crop is continuously covered through the reading.

The final thing that I wanted to touch on was the way that the tribe handled the murder of one of the tribe member’s wives. When the wife was murdered in a different tribe they all had a meeting and agree that the Umuofia tribe would give the other tribe an ultimatum. Give up a young man and a virgin or go to war. The other tribe gave them a man and a virgin. This speaks to the level of power the Umofia tribe has in the world, especially over its neighboring tribes. It struck me as an interesting way of going about justice and the thing I found most fascinating was that the murder was never mentioned again. It was a thing of the past that was completely forgotten.