Bijay Bajracharya

Paper 2    

 Things Fall Apart

        The definition of a religion may vary from person to person and different religions may be followed or practiced by different peoples based on their tradition, custom and ethnicity. Religion helps an individual to cleanse his mind and stay disciplined. According to my religion, we worship a cow as a holy animal and we do not allow people to slaughter any cow in my country. But I see that people here in the United States slaughter cows and make a beef burger out of it. Similarly, in the text “Things Fall Apart” we can see that the people of Igbo have their own religion as well as the Christian missionaries.

  But the religion that the people of Igbo follow are really strange and weird compared to that of the Christian missionaries and does not make any sense at all. The Oracle was considered as a god and they all had to follow the oracle’s instruction. It can be evidenced when the author says, “Beware of exchanging words with Agbala. Does a man speak when a god speaks? Beware!”(101).The Oracle instructs Okonko to kill Ikemefuna and he does execute Ikemefuna without any hesitation in spite of him treating Ikemefuna as a son. It is also found that the people of Igbo have a belief that if a woman gives birth to a twins then it may bring bad luck to their family so therefore, they should be leave their twins in the sacred forest when the author says “Nwoye had heard that twins were put in earthenware pots and thrown away in the forest, but he had never yet come across them” (61). Moreover, we come to know that they have this custom where they do not bury the body of people who had died during the week of peace when the author says “If a man dies at this time he is not buried but cast into the Evil Forest” (32).As we go along the story, we come across a point where Okonkwo accidentally kills Ezeudu’s sixteen-year-old son. According to their religion, it was a crime and Okonkwo along with his family had to be exiled from his village for seven years. His huts were burned down and his animals were also killed.

  I just do not understand how people can follow such a religion that commands a father to kill his son, leave their children in the evil forest and not bury the body of dead people just because they were dead on the week of peace.On the other hand we see that the religion of the Christian missionaries were more logical than that of Umuofia. They did not fear living in the evil forest and built a church out there. The Christian missionaries backfired the Umuofian religion by surviving for more than 28 days in the evil forest. “At last the day came by which all the missionaries should have died. But they were still alive, building a new red-earth and thatch house for their teacher, Mr. Kiaga”(Achebe,151).This led many young people of Umuofia to convert their religion as they saw that some the beliefs of their religion were not true at all. The Christian missionaries welcomed women who had given birth to twins as well as the ones with no titles. They built school and encouraged children to join them.their society were much more advanced than that of Umuofia.

       The outdated religious beliefs of the Umuofia let their people to convert their religion to Christianity causing many fathers to disown their children as Okonkwo had with Nwoye. The fight against the Christian missionaries to save their tradition also caused Okonkwo to commit suicide and his body did not even get buried by his clansmen because according to their religion committing suicide was against their custom. “It is an abomination for a man to take his own life. It is an offense against the earth, and a man who commits it will not be buried by his clansmen” (207).