TFAJournal+Andrew

Text to world

The following chapters of the book Things Fall Apart continue with a sudden appearance of white men. There has been strange rumors about a village getting wiped out by those albinos and finally, one white priest arrived with his followers. There were many jesuit priests sent throughout the world to spread the words of God from the Roman Catholic Church. I was surprised by the fact that priest reached them before other merchants or conquerers looking for goods. I guess that is the good part of this visit. So the relationship between this situation and the world is that the other parts of the world is also getting visited by European jesuit priests spreading Christianity. Since most of the natives all have their own native religion the priests are considered uninvited guests.

I guess Okonkwo did not change much as I expected. My expectations of this story was to see Okonkwo get rid of his macho thoughts and become more tolerant about all customs and goods. However he eventually acted cold blooded again, towards his ‘real’ son. And now, another disappeared.

Why does Okonkwo have to act so cold blooded? Especially to his relatives?

Text to Text

Since I failed to find relationships between any other texts,myself,or the world, I decided to write the relationship between the exile of Okonkwo and the exile of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. The basic idea of the similarity between the two is that they both have been exiled from their town or garden( in case of Adam and Eve). For those that might not know the famous biblical story of Adam and Eve I will give a short summary. According to the Bible, God created Adam and Eve, the first homo-sapiens, in a beautiful place called Garden of Eden. God allowed them to do whatever but one, eating the fruit of good and evil. As you expected, they ate the fruit making God kick them out from the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve were never allowed to return. The original story is way more complex and detailed but I just shortened it for the privilege of you readers. Adam and Eve start out a new community ( Despite the fact that they were the only people of that time) and they look back at times when they were in Garden of Eden, regretting their foolish acts. Although what Okonkwo has done was an accident, he still got exiled with his family members as a punishment for killing a kinsmen. The two situations seem quite related to me in the sense that they start out a new life from the exile.

We got up to the point where Okonkwo and his family members arrived in the village of Mbanta where his mothers kinsmen settle. Chapter ended with the little speech of Uchendu, Okonkwo’s uncle. We can predict that Okonkwo will at least have a slight change in his attitude of living a new life, if he was truly inspired by the speech of Uchendu. However, my impression of Okonkwo is not a typical character who will be moved simply by a speech. So, although Okonkwo will try to hide his unpleasantness, he eventually will reveal his true thoughts by doing something bad.

7years is not a short period of time. Will Okonkwo change a lot throught the 7 years while he is living with his mother’s kinsmen? If so, how? If not, why not?

Text to Text

I am not so sure about what I will be writing about, and I hope this is not a common topic that other people will be using in their paragraphs. I will be focusing on the short story from the book. The story is about a deceiving tortoise who fools the birds in the sky. The tortoise eventually gets punished by the parrot’s conspiracy and it explains why tortoises’ have hard shells. The tortoise uses this trick where he tells the bird that his name is ‘For All of You’ and when he asks a bird for whom these foods are prepared for, the bird replies: ‘For All of You’. As a result, the Tortoise greedily devours the food making the birds angry. I found a similar story in a ancient epic poem, ‘The Odyssey’. Although I am not confident of what I remember about the story I still have a rough idea of how it goes. So the story starts with the hero Odyssey and his poor crew members who are stuck in an island because of the scary cyclops. Odyssey lies to the cyclops that his name is ‘Nobody’, and at night he stabs the eye of the cyclops to escape. Cyclops who is now blind and extremely mad shouts outside: “Nobody is killing me!”, “Nobody blinded me!”. Unfortunately, his fellow cyclops think he has gone mad and they eventually end up ignoring the cyclops. With the help of the wise hero, Odyssey, his crew was able to escape from the island. Do you find the relationship between the two stories? Or is it just me? Obviously, the relationship I found was the trick using fake names. The difference between the two stories is that the tortoise was partly an antagonist while Odyssey was a heroic protagonist.

Question: What other relationships exist between the two stories above?

Respond to Minae Kwon: Two of the responds above are absolutely correct. Well, I do not want to restate nor summarize what they have been stating. This is kind of a new idea but religion and deities were also used as a justification. First in the early societies, when new rulers arose, their justification was that they were chosen by God. This also happens in the future. For instance, in France during the 18th century the kings claimed that they have been chosen by god and if anyone goes against the monarchs, they are going against god as well. Since the royals emphasized religion so strongly it was hard for the peasants to rebel. Also, in the ancient chinese empires, whenever people wanted rebellion to overthrow the present government, they claimed that it was the ‘mandate of heaven’.

Text- To - myself

One question I got while I was reading these two chapters were: ‘ If I were OkonKwo, what would I do about Ikemefuna?’. Well, it really doesn’t depend how moral or right one is in this case. It is ‘right’ for them to obey and listen to what Oracle says. Of course people will feel pity for Ikemefuna, but thats it. They will take no actions or do anything about it to save Ikemefuna. As I mentioned above, it is ‘right’ and ‘moral’ to listen to oracle. In the Igbo peoples’ perspective, they are performing the God’s will to kill Ikemefuna. So I got to conclude, that if I were Ikemefuna, I would have done the same thing. If not I would be going against God. Honestly, I believe most of the readers at least criticized Okonkwo in some way for such a cruel act. However, no matter who was in the shoes of Okonkwo, I believe they would have done the same. I admit the fact that he did not have to cut Ikemefuna himself to look macho, but Okonkwo’s fame and glory eventually forced him to do so to keep his position. I kind of digressed, but my main point is that I feel related to Okonkwo and I understand his decisions.

Question: Could Okonkwo do anything else besides killing Ikemefuna? Was it wothful for him to fight back against the Oracle in order to protect his temporary-son?

Close REading

Text - World

In the first few chapters of the book “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe, the Ibo life is well described and shown. The factor that I focused on before discussing the relationship, was the characteristic that makes one be respected by others. In other words, I will be talking about the aspects that makes an individual great compared to others according to their society. First of all, in the Ibo tribal society, due to the wild environment vulnerable to external invasions and assaults, the strongest are the ones that are respected the most. This is why Okonkwo was praised so much after defeating the Cat in wrestling and becoming such a great warrior. However, in the society we live in, strength is not respected as much as intelligence,knowledge, and wisdom. These three aspects are also wanted traits in the Ibo society.

Culture

Fertility deities were the most important beings in agrarian societies. This is mainly because the people thought the fertility deities were the ones who determined how much each will harvest. So people had to make numerous offerings,sacrifices,and others to please the god. There are many other different cultural, and ritual traditions that I do not perfectly know why they are practiced: Week of Piece, abandoning dead bodies in the Evil Forrest, and others.

Question - What kind of religion did they practice? Was it shintoism,monotheism,polytheism, coptic,Zoroastrianism, or what?