Essay on Brutalities of African Society in Chinua Achebes Things Fall

Brutalities of African Society Exposed in Things plunge Apart David Carroll writes, of the novel Things Fall Apart, This incident is not only a comment on Okonkwos heartlessness. It criticizes implicitly the laws he is too literally implementing... (Carroll) The incident that David Carroll refers to is the death of Ikemefuna. Ikemefuna was a young boy who was handed everyplace to the crossroads of Umuofia as compensation for the murder of one of that villages citizens. He is handed over to Okonkwo, a great man in the village, to whom he gives every affection. The legal brief livelihood with Okonkwo and death of this open young man, and the life of Okonkwo himself, is a microcosm of life in Umuofia. Inconsistencies, brutalities, and conflict abound in even the highest of Umuofian life. And as Ikemefuna is light-emitting diode off to be murdered by the man he calls father, the unanimous tribe and its values is being judged and found wanting (Carroll). When Ikemefuna first ar rives in Umuofia, he is housed with Okonkwo because Okonkwo is a great man in the village. He had reached his primordial and was a man of wealth. Ikemefuna quickly befri finished Okonkwos eldest son and began calling Okonkwo father. Soon, however, this presumable peace and civility in the village and the life of the villagers disappears. Okonkwo receives a pith from the village elders that the boy, the towns innocence, must be killed off. The boy is lead off to the slaughter completely unaware of his fate, and with his father in the company of the killers. When a machete is drawn and the black pot atop Ikemefunas head is cut down, the boy runs to the man he loved as father. It is he who, lacking the fortitude to confront the others with his love for the boy, draws his machete and... ...e on the things that held us together and we subscribe to fallen apart (Achebe, 176). The village of Umuofia held to backward laws and values that destroy innocent children (Achebe, 146). The t ribes innocence had to die in order for those who survived to mature. Although Umuofias peak of innocence whitethorn have been when Ikemefuna was handed over to the village, but its maturity would come through with(predicate) the death of Ikemefuna, the tribes innocence, at the hands of those the tribe called father. Things Fall Apart distinctly illustrates the faults of the African system and way of life through the series of catastrophes which end with his Okonkwos and Umuofias death (Carroll). Works Cited Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. New York, New York Bantam Doubleday dell Publishing Group, Inc., 1994. Carroll, David. Chinua Achebe. New York St. Martins Press, 1980.