Summer Reading Analysis - Things Fall Apart, Part III

At the end of the novel, I found a strange coincidence that I would like to point out. Towards the end of the novel, Okonkwo states that he does not believe that the white folk could ever understand the culture of his tribe unless he learned their language. This reminds me of and the beginning of the book, where the content was so thickly laced with vocabulary from the tribe's native language that I found it incredibly difficult and often times frustrating to read. It just occured to me that maybe the author's purpose in using so many foriegn words was so that he would be able to teach white people about this tribe's culture.

I think a second purpose this book contains is so that the author can explain how the existance of a society can lead to the destruction of an individual. Throughout the course of the novel, Okonkwo has repeatedly hid his affections for his wives and children in order to appear "manly" and "strong", even going as far to have personally slaughtered a child who he looked at as his own. He spends his entire life trying to conform to his society's mold of the ideal adult male. Perhaps a better and larger example in this story is how the larger and more powerful white man's culture took control of and wiped out the tribal culture, "[putting] a knife on the things that held [them] together and [they] have fallen apart."

It is interesting how Okonkwo's life is more or less tied into his social status, and the "life" of his tribe. He spends almost the entirety of his energy into building up the reputation of being a fierce warrior and a true man, but in the end he still lost it all and wound up comitting suicide. I find it interesting how earlier in the novel, a warriors extravagant burial service is described as an amazing event, while Okonkwo was said to have been buried like a dog. I believe this was done intentionally on the part of the author to create a stronger sense of irony.