A Conflicted Society Essay

In the raw Things F alone asunder, Chinua Achebe challenges the indorser to actively engage in the analysis of numbers raised throughout the text. Achebe brings the write up of tradition versus counterchange to the forefront of Umuofian comp all for the ref to examine. Achebe shows the reader the gradual autumn of the main character, Okonkwo, through his refusal to accept change in his family. Achebe too brings about the contentious issues dealing with masculinity in Umuofian high society. Okonkwo rejects anything that he feels is wo potent and thus seals his own demise. Achebe shows the reader that acting manly doesnt inevitably make one a man. By simplifying the issues deep down Umuofian society and the conflicted Okonkwo, Achebe paints a go by picture of the consequences of closed-minded societies, and the the great unwashed who go within those societies.Okonkwo and his Umuofian society are firm believers in tradition, and continually ignore the drive for chang e throughout the novel. In a deal with a neighboring village, Okonkwo becomes the illegal initiate to a boy named Ikemefuna. everyplace time, Okonkwo comes to accept the boy, finding him to be an elevated password. While Okonkwo is fond of the boy, he neer shows any affection toward Ikemefuna.After third years of living with Okonkwo and his family in Umuofia, Ikemefuna is bump off by the man that he hard-boiled as his father and early(a) custody in the village only because the oracle told a village elder that the boy must die. Rather than challenge what his society is doing, Okonkwo goes along with his clansmen and takes part in the ending of Ikemefuna. In his dying moments, Ikemefuna runs to Okonkwo for protection, but Okonkwo kills Ikemefuna because he refuses to question the ideals of his fellow villagers, and does non requisite to appear weak.After Okonkwo is exiled from Umuofia for accidentally sidesplitting another young man in the village, the reader still s ees a vacillation to embrace change in society. straightway living in his motherland, Mbanto, Okonkwo and his family are met with missionaries that excite travelled to the village to share Christian beliefs with the villagers. The missionaries preach about the danger of worshipping saturnine gods. The villagers reject the missionaries beliefs, only when because it is not what their fathers and grandfathers believed.The people of Mbanta cling to their non-Jew religion with accomplished closed-mindedness, rejecting the Holy Trinity and any other beliefs that differ from the traditional beliefs of their ancestors. Reverend jam Smith, who is the leader of the missionaries, has his church burned to the globe because one of the villagers who converted to Christianity unmasked an egwugwu during a pagan ceremony, which the villagers believe to be the same as killing an ancestral spirit. Rather than be open-minded to other religions and beliefs, the villagers reject anything that i s not what they are used to believing. They burn experience Reverent Smiths church to get rid of the villagers, and the new ideas that they preached.Okonkwo is not accepting at all of anything that seems effeminate to him. Okonkwo sets very strict boundaries with his daughter, Ezinma, simply because she is female. compensate though it is his daughter, Ezinma, that knows her father the best, and that Okonkwo feels closest to, he keeps her at arms length. The feelings that Okonkwo has for his daughter are illustrated in the passage that states, Okonkwo was very gilded in his daughters. He never halt regretting that Ezinma was a girl (Achebe 172).Because Ezinma was a girl, even so though she probably understood her father the best of any of his children, he pushed her out and avoided a close, loving relationship with her simply because of her gender. By pushing forth Ezinma, Okonkwo is leaving by a great probability to get to know his daughter and bemuse a closer relationshi p with her. barely because she is a female, he rebuffs her attempts to arrive at much(prenominal) a relationship with her father.Another simulation of Okonkwos intolerance for womanly things is within his relationship with his son, Nwoye. Nwoye decides that he is going to go against his fathers wishes, and join the missionaries. Upon learn of Nwoyes decision, Okonkwo sits down with his sons and tells them that, I exit only bring in a son who is a man, who will hold his heading up among my people. If any one of you prefers to be a woman let him comply Nwoye now while I am alive so that I arouse curse him (Achebe 172).Okonkwo would rather drive absent his own flesh and blood than to have them be who they really are, and accepting them for all that they are, and all that they arent. By pushing away his son simply because his aspirations differ from those that Okonkwo would have for him, Okonkwo is creating a very large break out in the foundation of his family. Once a child is told that his father isnt rarified of him, it is very difficult to rebuild any relationship. Okonkwo would rather maintain a manly appearance than accept his family for who they are.Chinua Achebes novel, Things riposte Apart addresses the always controversial issue of tradition versus change, and shows his readers how a failure to be open-minded and accepting of new ideas roll in the hay lead a one into a vicious cycle of making mistakes.Achebe also addresses the issue of masculinity versus femininity in the novel. Through the actions of his main character, Okonkwo, the reader realizes that simply because a man is tough does not necessarily mean that he is a good, respectable man, even if he is super regarded within his own society. Achebes novel brings these issues that exist within African society, and allows the reader to see the consequences of rejecting change through the exacting demise of the main character of the story, Okonkwo, and the ensuant effects of rejecting new ideas and beliefs on society in general.Works Cited Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. innovative York Anchor Books, 1994.