Things Fall Apart

The most interesting aspect of “Things Fall Apart” was the description of their complex religious and spiritual beliefs. I found it is very interesting to learn how they worshipped all these different gods, and ultimately what these gods represented. Chinua Achebe did a great job in analyzing and investigating Ibo culture, it was his first novel and was published in 1958. Chinua Achebe was born on November 16, 1930. He is the fifth of six children in his family. The British government was in control of Nigeria at that time. A representative of British government tried to convince Achebe’s parent to abandon their traditional religion and convert to Christianity. This caused Achebe to grow up as a Christian, but he was more interested his traditional Ibo culture than the Christian upbringing that he was brought up in. He didn’t want to change his own tradition because he thought his tradition have a value. He did not want to disrespect African culture in his novel.
Achebe disagreed with the books about Africa that were written by British authors. The authors were Joseph Conrad and John Buchan. Achebe felt that both authors were wrong and inaccurate in their description about African culture, so he wanted to write about the true and accurate events that happened in Africa. “Things Fall Apart” was based on some of the events that happened in Achebe’s life. If Achebe had not known learned traditional Ibo culture from his father and had not been told Ibo folk-stories by his mother, he could not have written his novels. At the time when Achebe wrote “Thing Fall Apart”, many Africans accepted the European judgment about Africa. They taught primarily that African history and culture was not important and actually non-existent.   Achebe didn’t think the same way as his fellow Africans; he wanted to inform the world about Ibo cultural traditions and how his ancestors created their myths about Ibo culture. Achebe didn’t let his own people forget their past, he taught them to...