Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Things Fall Apart

by Chinua Achebe

10 Words: Traditional Man, cannot accept change, longs for good old days.

     This story follows through the life of a man who works hard for himself, his family and his people. Then one day an accident happens and everything he has worked for gets turned upside down. He is forced to spend seven years in Exile (his wife and children along with him). The year ends with Missionaries starting to gain a foothold in both his tribe and the one his mother came from. 

    The way it is written to me is apart of the simplified way that the people live in this world. They value the basic parts of life; having enough food to feed one's family, having a safe place for your family to live. The story is told with these simple facts in mind and it makes those simple parts of life feel like the greatest ideals one could live up to. 

     When things are changing he reacts against them. He believes in the traditions and the ways that have always been what he has lived for and seen as the strength of the tribe and his people. He does not understand the white people, their ways, nor does he feel that there is anything to gain by learning these things. As such when his son joins them he feels greatly betrayed by that action. 

     Its his strict belief in the old ways of doing things that leads him to attack the members of the church. When none of the tribe follow his lead though he is forced to accept that the tribe has changed even though he hasn't. He continues along the path that he sees as the strong, correct force for a man of the tribe to act when faced by an invader, though in the end he is forced to face the change and changes himself by committing suicide instead of facing the law - and pour treatment - of the white men.  

(Read as apart of Crash Course Literature, part 2 )