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).

Take Home Quiz

GENDER

 The society of the Igbo people is most probably found to be dominated by the males. Women are considered to be weak and not treated with respect. It is often found that the women are not given any right to perform any activity on their own. Okonko has a belief that for a person to be manly, he should always have his wife under his control and it can be evidenced that he does have his wives under control when the author says, “His wives, especially the youngest, lived in perpetual fear of his fiery temper” (13).When Okonko is forced to go back to his mother’s village, Uchendu explains how a child goes to his mother for comfort after being beaten or scolded by his father. Similarly, Uchendu welcomes Okonkwo to his mother land after being exiled by the people of Igbo. This is why “Mother is Supreme”. Although Okonkwo masculinity has helped him to gain much pride among his people but unfortunately he was not being liked for such behavior by his family when he severely punishes them by beating or threatening to kill them. I feel that the text leads the reader to believe that it is unhealthy to be an extreme version of my gender because Okonko believes that any other emotions beside anger would lead their children to become an example of his father’s nature.

FATHERHOOD

Okonko has always hated his father Unoka for being such an embarrassment in his life. Unoko was a very lazy man and was never concerned about his future. He almost owed money to everyone in his village. Whenever he had money with him he spent unwisely believing that one should enjoy his present rather than worrying about his future. “He always said that whenever he saw a dead man‘s mouth he saw the folly of not eating what one had in one’s lifetime” (Achebe, 4).As we go along the text we find out that Okonko feared that his children would follow the footsteps of his grandfather so he tried to keep Nwoye and his other children disciplined by threatening and beating him. “Okonko’s first son ,Nwoye was then twelve years old but was already causing his father great anxiety for his incipient laziness. At any rate, that was how it looked to his father, and he sought to correct him by constant nagging and beating and so Nwoye was developing into a sad-faced youth”(Achebe,13).

RELIGION

The person of Igbo seems to be really superstitious. According to them any women giving birth to twins should leave their twins in the sacred forest to be dead. They believed that one should not be engaged in any work or any violent activity. Moreover, they also believed that if a man kills one of his tribesmen, he would bring evil to the land and should be exiled from the village. The people of Igbo believed in many gods .they had separate god for earth, crops, food and many more. Whereas the Christian missionaries only had a single god in which they had complete faith. According to the belief of the people of Igbo ,any people living in the sacred forest would ultimately end up dying but that does not happen when the Christian missionaries during their stay in the sacred forest. In this way some people come to conclude that the religion of the missionaries were more strong and therefore the Christian missionaries won more converts.“At last the day came by which all the missionaries should have died. But they were still alive, building a new …that week they won a handful more converts” (Achebe, 151).

Things Fall Apart

As a story about a culture on the verge of change, Things Fall Apart deals with how the prospect and reality of change affect various characters. The tension about whether change should be privileged over tradition often involves questions of personal status. Okonkwo, for example, resists the new political and religious orders because he feels that they are not manly and that he himself will not be manly if he consents to join or even tolerate them. Okonkwo’s relationship with his late father shapes much of his violent and ambitious demeanor. . Since early childhood, Okonkwo’s embarrassment about his lazy, squandering, and effeminate father, Unoka, has driven him to succeed. To some extent, Okonkwo’s resistance of cultural change is also due to his fear of losing societal status. His sense of self-worth is dependent upon the traditional standards by which society judges him. This system of evaluating the self inspires many of the clan’s outcasts to embrace Christianity. Long scorned, these outcasts find in 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 they face the dilemma of trying to determine how best to adapt to the reality 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 need for the mastery of traditional methods of farming, harvesting, building, and cooking

Things Fall Apart

                                   

         Things Fall Apart

 Okonkwo is one of the wealthy and respected warriors of the Umuofia clan. He is driven by his hatred of his father, Unoka, and his fear of becoming like him. Okonkwo associates Unoka with weakness, and with weakness he associates femininity. Although Okonkwo 's father was a lazy man who received no titles in his village and died with huge debts, Okonkwo brought honor to his village by beating Amalinze the Cat in a wrestling contest. Until his match with Okonkwo, the Cat had been undefeated for seven years. The practice of sharing palm-wine and kola nuts is repeated throughout the book to emphasize the peacefulness of the Igbo. When Unoka’s resentful neighbor visits him to collect a debt, the neighbor does not immediately address the debt. Instead, he and Unoka share a kola nut and pray to their ancestral spirits. Okonkwo is selected by the elders to be the guardian of Ikemefuna, a boy taken prisoner by the village as a peace settlement between two villages after his father killed an Umofian woman. Ikemefuna is homesick and scared at first, but Nwoye’s mother treats him as one of her own, and he is immediately popular with Okonkwo’s children. During the Week of Peace, Okonkwo notices that his youngest wife, Ojiugo, has left her hut to have her hair braided without having cooked dinner. He beats her for her negligence, shamefully breaking the peace of the sacred. Wife-beating is an accepted practice. Moreover, femininity is associated with weakness while masculinity is associated with strength. It is no coincidence that the word that refers to a titleless man also means “woman”.  A man is not believed to be “manly” if he cannot control his women. Okonkwo frequently beats his wives, and the only emotion he allows himself to display is anger.

      

Characterization of Mrs. Newell

Characterization of Mrs. Newell

Mrs. Sam Newell can be categorized as a person whose social status comes right at the top of her priority list. To maintain her social life and her finance, she could go to the extent of commodifying her daughter as well. She commodifes her daughter by marrying her daughter Hermoine  to a wealthy man so that it would help her maintain her financial as well as social status.

Rewrites of Paper 1           

        In the essay “everyday use” the author Alice Walker speaks of a relationship between a mother and her two daughters, Maggie and Dee. The mother narrates her story by introducing Maggie and her personality stating that Maggie was shy by nature, homely and was ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs due to the house fire. She lacks confidence and shuffles when she walks. Whereas Dee is Mama’s older daughter and is an educated woman. Dee is very aggressive by nature and does not have any respect for people either younger or elder than her

       Basic concepts in the psychoanalytical theory that are common in “Everyday Use” include the defenses, and core issues. A few of the defenses Dee uses include low self-esteem, denial and avoidance. Maggie has a core issue which is self esteem .I feel that she is going through this psychological problem because of the burn scars down on her arms and legs. Maggie’s low self esteem is evidence in her body language when the narrator claims “Maggie will be nervous until after her sister goes: she will stand hopelessly in corners, homely and ashamed of the burned scars down her arms and legs ,eyeing her sister with a mixture of envy and awe. She thinks her sister has held life always in the palm of one hand, that “no” is a word the world never learned to say to her” (Walker).

 Dee was in denial that she ever came from a poor family. By keeping her upper-class lifestyle and never visiting her home, she could completely avoid remembering where she came from. By avoiding her home she can make a new image for herself and suppress her family and her past. To do this, Dee becomes obsessed with her image. By denying her past and by avoiding reminders of her past, Dee forms a psychological wound when the narrator claims “She wrote to me once that no matter where we “choose” to live, she will manage to come see us. But she will never bring her friends” (Walker).

Insecure or unstable sense of self is another core issues that Dee has hidden deep in her id. Dee is insecure and has an unstable sense of self. She isn’t completely sure who she is. She came from a poor, low-class, African-American family, but she was able to get a college degree. Is she still a part of her poor family? Or is she now in the middle-class? Because she is dangling between her old and new lives, she isn’t sure who she is.  “Our sense of self is insecure or unstable…this core issue makes us very vulnerable to the influence –for good or ill –of other people, and we may have the tendency to repeatedly change the we look(our clothing ,hairstyle, and the like )or behave as we become involved with different individuals or groups”(Walker).Dee changed the way she dressed because she is embarrassed of how she grew up in her family and changed  her name from “Dee” to “Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo “ to protest being named after people who have oppressed her.

   Everyday Use

         

                  In the story “Everyday use” the author Alice Walker speaks of a relationship between a mother and her two daughters, Maggie and Dee. The mother narrates her story by introducing Maggie and her personality stating that Maggie was shy by nature, homely and was ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs due to the house fire. She lacks confidence and shuffles when she walks. Whereas Dee is Mama’s older daughter and is an educated woman. She is very aggressive by nature and does not have any respect for people either younger or elder than her.

    

              American dream, Competition and Commodification are three aspects of the Marxist theory that can be evidenced in “Everyday Use”. According to Lois Tyson, the American dream can be defined as: “a capitalist ideology associated specifically with American history and culture” (59).Dee considers her as a part of the American dream because she was born in a poor family but she went to college with the help of her community and made something of herself. Her standard of living was much better compared to her past. The second aspect that can be evidenced in Dee is competition .She was a smart girl from the very beginning as a young girl and was always comparing herself with that of other people. It can be witnessed that Dee competes with Maggie for the quilt made by her grandma when she says “Maggie would put them on the bed and in five years they’d be in rags. Less than that!”(Dee).The last aspect that can be found was Commodification.We can say that Dee is viewing the quilts in terms of their social status when she says “Maggie can’t appreciate these quilts !She’d probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use.”She wants to show them off to her friends while Maggie will simply use them as she would any other quilt.