Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Ryan Lebens

Mrs. Saneholtz

Honors 10-Period 9/10

        Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe teaches the reader about many ideas. I have analyzed and discussed the book with other students and have been led to interpret the text differently. My first impression of the book was that it is a slow moving book that was there to teach the world that changing is needed for a village or nation to survive, but my idea has been shifted to knowing that the book has more meaning. Chinua Achebe was able to indirectly teach the readers multiple messages throughout his suspenseful book. He does a fantastic job allowing the readers to draw their own opinions and pull a concept in which they will remember throughout their lives. Achebe has driven me to pull out my own meaning from his story as well. My meaning is pulled from Okonkwo and his journey to become the perfect man. A man who lives to become more masculine than anyone else is actually the weakest man of them all.

        To begin, men occasionally use religion to promote themselves as a more masculine person than they are. Okonkwo is prone to using religion to have others view himself as very masculine throughout the book, Things Fall Apart. When Okonkwo goes with Ikemefuna he uses religion as an excuse to do something that will make him look tough. Okonkwo stammers, “‘The earth cannot punish me for obeying her messenger,’ Okonkwo said. ‘A child’s fingers are not scalded by a piece of hot yam which his mother puts in his palm’” (Achebe 67). The Oracle told Okonkwo that Ikemefuna must die, and Okonkwo saw this as the perfect time to be able to abuse his religion to make him see like a worthy man. Okonkwo is not actually a religious person, but he uses it in his favor because he cares more about earning titles and being seen as a strong leader, than he does about his family. Earlier when Okonkwo kills Ikemefuna, Chinua Achebe illustrates, “Dazed with fear, Okonkwo drew his machete and cut him down. He was afraid if being thought weak” (Achebe 61). By killing Ikemefuna, Okonkwo wants to seem like he is devoted to his religion and is not afraid to do anything the Oracle tells him to do. He hopes to be known as a fearless man, when really he is more afraid than any other man in his village. His fear of being thought of as weak is greater than any fear of a ‘weaker’ man throughout the book. Okonkwo covers this terrible fear up with his religion.