Cultural Conflict

in Things Fall Apart

Smt. S. B. Gardi

Department of English

Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

Prepared by- Urvi DaveCourse- MA- IISemester- 4Course No.- 14Paper Name- African LiteratureBatch Year- 2014-16Enrolment no.- 14101009email id- dave.urvi71@gmail.com

Index Introduction of the writerPrologueCentral theme of the NovelQuotationAbout novel and the conflictReligious and Social ConflictEconomic and Agricultural ConflictConclusionWorks Cited

Chinua Achebe was born in 1930 and was brought up in a pioneer Christian family in the large village of Ogidi, an early centre of Anglican missionary work in Eastern Nigeria.

He had begun writing and publishing short stories during his university years and followed those with the draft of a novel about the Nigerian encounter with colonialism seen through the lives of three generations within the same family. That long draft was ultimately divided into two parts, and published as Things Fall Apart in 1958 and No Longer at Ease in 1960.

His goals were modest when he began to conceive and write Things Fall Apart in the early 1950’s-

‘I was quite certain that I was going to try my hand at writing, and one of the things that set me

thinking was Joyce Cary’s novel set in Nigeria, Mr. Johnson, which was praised so much, and it was

clear to me that this was a most superficial picture... and so I thought if this was famous, then

perhaps someone ought to try and look at this from the inside.’

Prologue

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things Fall Apart; the centre cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

- W.B. Yeats, ‘The second coming’

If we are oblivious what is happening around us, we will be consuming what is happening around. In similar manner what was happening in the natives societies, people didn’t knew it. They all were oblivious. They were not aware of the traditional/ native societies. After sometime they came in contact with white man and they didn’t knew how to react and things started falling apart.

The central theme of the novel is what happens to the values that define Okonkwo’s cultural community and his own sense of moral order, when the institutions he had fought so hard to sustain collapse in the face of European colonialism. The cultural hero who had defeated Amalinze the cat in the novels first paragraph makes a regressive journey into exile and ultimate death. Tragedy happens as Okonkwo's may have failed because of his weakness as an individual, but his failure was inevitable because colonial rule had destabilized the values and institutions that sustained him. Indeed there is a close relationship in the novel between Okonkwo’s individual crisis- of authority and power- and the crisis of his community, which increasingly finds its defining characteristics undermined and transplanted by the new colonial order.

“When they arrived, we

had the land and they

had the Bible. They told

us to close our eyes.

Then they had the land

and we had the Bible”.

The novel is divided in three parts-1) Depicts life in pre-colonial Igbo land2) Relates the arrival of the Europeans and the introduction of Christianity3) Recounts the beginning of systematic colonial control in Eastern Nigeria

It disrupted religious practices, judicial system and social life.

The human consequences between the cultures affect the Umuofia people’s religion, agriculture, judicial system and social life.

Clash of cultures can be seen as a conflict of interests in the novel is the fundamental interests of the colonising people’s is to undermine the integrity of local traditions and cultures so that they can be replaced by European and/or Christian institutions of government and of faith.

With the arrival of ‘white’ man and the ‘white’ man’s religion and culture comes the collision. The missionaries came to convert the people, they belittle the Umuofia’s religious traditions and strongly urge them to abandon their Gods.

Religious and Social Conflict

Coming of the White man affects the people of Umuofia’s religion and cause cultural conflict.

Missionaries arrive and undertake a mission of Christian salvation and colonisation.

Okonkwo’s son, Nwoye, is severed from his family by the missionaries and their religion.

Nwoye joins the Christians, adopting their religion and separating himself from his family.

This turn of events shows an indirect product of the conflict expressly created by the missionaries that sought to turn the Igbo away from their traditional religion and to forget their Gods.

“It was not the mad logic

of the trinity that captivated him. He did not

understand it. It was the

poetry of the new religion, something felt in

the marrow.”

The missionaries build a house in a forbidden region, demonstrating a lack of understanding of local taboos. They also receive outcasts as members of the church community.

As the Christians and their converts continue to demonstrate a lack of concern for the Igbo customs and taboos, they are ostracized from the clan, a move that briefly creates an overt clash between the two cultures, putting them at odds with one another.

Nwoye’s decision to leave his home is also helped by Okonkwo’s anger, which is both part of his character, generally and part of specific and focused response to the colonist mission in Mbanta.

Obierika says“The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with

his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that

held us together and we have fallen apart.”

Economic and Agricultural Conflict People here were farmers and depended on agriculture for their survival. Men, women and children, everyone worked. The missionary’s arrival changed the way farming was performed. It took children out of the fields and put them in the classroom; it bought a new form of government and it brought its own trade. Farmland was devalued, crops were worth less money and economically the people suffered.

Okonkwo commits suicide because he has lost his reputation as well as reputed man in his culture which was now filled by the church and Christian values.

Conclusion-

It shows true imperialist face behind it.

It shows the disintegration suffered by the poor and varied culture of the Igbo land with the intrusion of the colonisers.

Works CitedAchebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. Heinemann Educational Publishers, 1958.

http://www.gradesaver.com/things-fall-apart/q-and-a/collision-of-two-cultures-1285

http://www.bookrags.com/essay-2005/3/12/171312/489/#gsc.tab=0

Class notes

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