17 July 2006

Part 3 Answers

  1. Achebe chooses to bring in the European colonial presence in the last third of the novel in order to show change. By him bringing in the colonial presence one begins to understand that things have changed for the worse and that the tribe is not as strong as it used to be. It also shows a beginning, middle, and ending point in the story. The beginning where Igbo life is unchanged, the middle where he starts to see the whites and how they are changing things, and the end where everything has fallen apart.
  2. While Okonkwo was in exile the church and the white man came and started weakening the tribe. Men who were once willing to fight were too afraid to stop the church, and many men and women from the tribe converted to christianity which causes confusion to their families. The people of Umuofia are no longer a strong society they are now weakened by the attempts of the church to change their ways of life.
  3. The kotma are like judges in the new society, they bring people in to be judged and decide what will become of them. The white man’s laws are different from the Umuofias laws, the white man takes money and kills as punishment, while the Umuofians exhile, and sometimes kill. The white man use punishment more for their own profit, and possibly amusement since they struck the six Umuofian leaders unjustly.
  4. It is already to late to drive the white men out because now some of the Igbo people’s families and friends are now joined with the white, and even if they did manage to kill the few white men, those villagers who have joined with the white man would go and get reinforcements and they might end up slaughtered like the Abame. Obierika says the white man is clever because he came peacefully and quitely with their religion, the Igbo people thought they were ignorant and not a threat so they let them stay, and now many from the tribe have joined with them and the tribe is no longer one. Obierika is considered a trasitional figure because he used to be like Okonkwo when it came to fighting for their tribe, but now he has backed down because he feels they don’t have a chance against the white man so he just accepts them.
  5. Mr. Brown was a kind, understanding man who wanted to understand the ways of the Igbo people, he wanted to use his understanding to convert more of the Igbo people and he thought strength was in numbers, and he was a compramiser. Mr. Smith is a strong preacher and he believes that there is not strength in number but in wisedom, he sees everything as black and white, good or evil. Mr. Smith is more strict and punishes for things he thinks are ungodly.
  6. Many people in Umuofia feel differently from Okonkwo about the white man’s dispensation because the white man brought a trading store so now they could sell their crops for larger amounts of money so that lots of money was now flowing into Umuofia. Religion and education go hand in hand in strengthening the white man’s medicine because the people who attend the school are becoming educated in fundamentals and religion most likely, meaning that the white man is sort of fixing the people or making them more intelligent through their religion and schooling.
  7. The district commissioner tricks the six leaders into jail by saying he wants to have a meetings with them. During this meeting he calls in some of his men who he wants to hear the story of why the church and Enoch’s house were destroyed, but then very sneakily these men hand cuff the six leaders. Okonkwo gains even more hatred towards the white man this way. Okonkwo kills the messenger because he hopes that his tribe will be smart enough to fight with him, but after he kills the man and nobody else rushes into battle he realizes that the men will not fight. I believe that Okonkwo committed suicide because he doesn’t want to live in a tribe that will just be destroyed because nobody wants to fight back, so to him the tribe is already dead. Okonkwo was isolated in the end because no one in the tribe thought the same as him anymore, he was the one man who wanted to fight and he knew nobody would support and join with him. Yes I consider Okonkwo a tragic hero, he was the last person the truly uphold the ways of his fathers and in order to uphold the tradition he was willing to do anything, even if he was the only one left. Although he might not have changed or fixed much he is still a hero for trying even though he knew he stood alone.
  8. The district commissioner says he will write a paragraph about Okonkwo in his story, I think he would write it in an unflattering manner. By that I mean he would write about Okonkwo not like the leader and hero he was but as an example of what not to be, I think Okonkwo will be someone in his story who shows that you should join Christianity because resisting it is stupid. Opposite of the commissioner Achebe has decided to make this whole novel about Okonkwo. This is because Okonkwo’s story must be told in so much more than one paragraph to do it justice. Okonkwo’s story was about a hero who did anything to keep tradition alive but loses to the Christians. Okonkwo went through many ups and downs and came a long way from child to man, and even when he was exiled he still managed to come back and earn his spot back. Achebe wrote a whole novel about Okonkwo because anything less just doesn’t cut it.
  9. In Things Fall Apart, things fell apart by the clan no longer being strong, they were weakened by the Christians coming in a taking some of their own this made them weary to fight back, and also they knew if they fought back they might all be killed so fear was a factor in the tribe falling apart. I think the main theme of the novel was things fall apart, or in other words if a society isn’t strong enough to stay together it is very easy for something to come in between and ruin the society as they know it. Also I think that another message may be that if tradition isn’t upheld you lose a part of yourself and a part of your heritage.
  10. This combination of Western literary forms and Igbo/African creative expression produces a strong cultural effect, if the Western literary forms had not been added in then the novel would have been so much harder to understand and the cultural effect would have been weakened. It also creates an ironic effect thinking about the novel and knowing that it was about the whites sort of ruining the traditions and ways of the Africans and here is a story which is not totally African because it has been in a way white washed. Which just makes it ironic because two cultures who were in the story conisdered enemies and now being combined to create a novel.

Posted by Sharon_Lizotte @ 8:24 AM