THEMES AND SYMBOLS IN THINGS FALL APART

THEMES in THINGS FALL APART

 

Themes are the basic and infrequently universal ideas explored in an exceedingly piece of writing.

THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN CHANGE AND TRADITION

 

As a story a few cultures on the verge of change, Things collapse deals with how the prospect and reality of change affect various characters. the strain about whether the change should be privileged over tradition often involves questions of private status. Okonkwo, as an example, resists the new political and non secular orders because he feels that they're not manly which he himself won't be manly if he consents to affix or maybe tolerate them. To some extent, Okonkwo’s resistance to cultural change is additionally because of his fear of losing societal status. His sense of self-worth depends upon the standard standards by which society judges him. this method of evaluating the self inspires many of the clan’s outcasts to embrace Christianity. Long scorned, these outcasts find within the Christian value system a refuge from the Igbo cultural values that place them below everyone else. In their new community, these converts enjoy a more elevated status.

The villagers, in general, are caught between resisting and embracing change and that they face the dilemma of trying to work out how best to adapt to the truth of change. Many of the villagers are excited about the new opportunities and techniques that the missionaries bring. This European influence, however, threatens to extinguish the necessity for the mastery of traditional methods of farming, harvesting, building, and cooking. These traditional methods, once crucial for survival, are now, to varying degrees, dispensable. Throughout the novel, Achebe shows how dependent such traditions are upon storytelling and language and thus how quickly the abandonment of the Igbo language for English could lead on to the eradication of those traditions.

 

VARYING INTERPRETATIONS OF MASCULINITY

Okonkwo’s relationship along with his late father shapes much of his violent and bold demeanor. He wants to rise above his father’s legacy of spendthrift, indolent behavior, which he views as weak and thus effeminate. This association is inherent within the clan’s language—the narrator mentions that the word for a person who has not taken any of the expensive, prestige-indicating titles is agbala, which also means “woman.” But, for the foremost part, Okonkwo’s idea of manliness isn't the clan’s. He associates masculinity with aggression and feels that anger is that the only emotion that he should display. For this reason, he frequently beats his wives, even threatening to kill them from time to time. We are told that he doesn't consider things, and that we see him act rashly and impetuously. Yet others who are in no way effeminate don't behave during this way. Obierika, unlike Okonkwo, “was a person who considered things.” Whereas Obierika refuses to accompany the lads on the trip to kill Ikemefuna, Okonkwo not only volunteers to affix the party which will execute his surrogate son but also violently stabs him together with his machete just because he's fearful of appearing weak.

Okonkwo’s seven-year exile from his village only reinforces his notion that men are stronger than women. While in exile, he lives among the kinsmen of his motherland but resents the amount in its entirety. The exile is his opportunity to induce involved along with his feminine side and to acknowledge his maternal ancestors, but he keeps reminding himself that his maternal kinsmen aren't as warlike and fierce as he remembers the villagers of Umuofia to be. He faults them for his or her preference of negotiation, compliance, and avoidance over anger and bloodshed. In Okonkwo’s understanding, his uncle Uchendu exemplifies this pacifist (and therefore somewhat effeminate) mode.

 

LANGUAGE AS AN INDICATION OF CULTURAL DIFFERENCE

Language is a very important theme in Things collapse from on several levels. In demonstrating the imaginative, often formal language of the Igbo, Achebe emphasizes that Africa isn't the silent or incomprehensible continent that books like Heart of Darkness made it intent on be. Rather, by peppering the novel with Igbo words, Achebe shows that the Igbo language is simply too complex for direct translation into English. Similarly, Igbo culture can't be understood within the framework of European colonialist values. Achebe also points out that Africa has many different languages: the villagers of Umuofia, for instance, poke fun of Mr. Brown’s translator because his language is slightly different from their own. On a macroscopic level, it's extremely significant that Achebe chose to jot down Things crumble from in English—he clearly intended it to be read by the West a minimum of the maximum amount, if less than by his fellow Nigerians. His goal was to critique and emend the portrait of Africa that was painted by such a lot of writers of the colonial period. Doing so required the utilization of English, the language of these colonial writers. Through his inclusion of proverbs, folktales, and songs translated from the Igbo language, Achebe managed to capture and convey the rhythms, structures, cadences, and sweetness of the Igbo language.

MOTIFS

Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary devices which will help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.

CHI

The concept of chi is discussed at various points throughout the novel and is very important to our understanding of Okonkwo as a tragic hero. The chi is an individual’s personal god, whose merit is decided by the individual’s luck or lack thereof. Along the lines of this interpretation, one can explain Okonkwo’s tragic fate because the results of a problematic chi —a thought that happens to Okonkwo at several points within the novel. For the clan believes, because the narrator tells us in Chapter 14, a “man couldn't rise beyond the destiny of his chi. ” But there's another understanding of chi that conflicts with this definition. In Chapter 4, the narrator relates, in line with an Igbo proverb, that “when a person says yes his chi says yes also.” in line with this understanding, individuals will their own destinies. Thus, depending upon our interpretation of chi, Okonkwo seems either more or less to blame for his own tragic death. Okonkwo himself shifts between these poles: when things are going well for him, he perceives himself as master and maker of his own destiny; when things go badly, however, he automatically disavows responsibility and asks why he should be so ill-fated.

 

ANIMAL IMAGERY

In their descriptions, categorizations, and explanations of human behavior and wisdom, the Igbo often use animal anecdotes to naturalize their rituals and beliefs. The presence of animals in their folklore reflects the environment during which they live—not yet “modernized” by European influence. Though the colonizers, for the foremost part, view the Igbo’s understanding of the globe as rudimentary, the Igbo perceive these animal stories, like the account of how the tortoise’s shell came to be bumpy, as logical explanations of natural phenomena. Another important animal image is that the figure of the sacred python. Enoch’s alleged killing and eating of the python symbolizes the transition to a replacement sort of spirituality and a replacement religious sect. Enoch’s disrespect of the python clashes with the Igbo’s reverence for it, epitomizing the incompatibility of colonialist and indigenous values.

SYMBOLS

Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colours accustomed represent abstract ideas or concepts.

 

LOCUSTS

Achebe depicts the locusts that descend upon the village in highly allegorical terms that prefigure the arrival of the white settlers, who will feast on and exploit the resources of the Igbo. the very fact that the Igbo eat these locusts highlights how innocuous they take them to be. Similarly, people who convert to Christianity fails to understand the damage that the culture of the colonizer does to the culture of the colonized.

The language that Achebe uses to explain the locusts indicates their symbolic status. The repetition of words like “settled” and “every” emphasizes the suddenly ubiquitous presence of those insects and hints at the way during which the arrival of the white settlers takes the Igbo off guard. Furthermore, the locusts are so heavy they break the tree branches, which symbolizes the fracturing of Igbo traditions and culture under the onslaught of colonialism and white settlement. Perhaps the foremost explicit clue that the locusts symbolize the colonists is Obierika’s comment in Chapter 15: “the Oracle . . . said that other white men were on their way. They were locusts. . . .”

 

FIRE

Okonkwo is related to burning, fire, and flame throughout the novel, alluding to his intense and dangerous anger—the only emotion that he allows himself to display. Yet the matter with fire, as Okonkwo acknowledges in Chapters 17 and 24, is that it destroys everything it consumes. Okonkwo is physically destructive—he kills Ikemefuna and Ogbuefi Ezeudu’s son—and emotionally destructive—he suppresses his fondness for Ikemefuna and Ezinma in favor of a colder, more masculine aura. even as fire feeds on itself until all that's left may be a pile of ash, Okonkwo eventually succumbs to his intense rage, allowing it to rule his actions until it destroys him.