Boekverslag : Chinua Achebe - Things Fall Apart
De taal ervan is Engels en het aantal woorden bedraagt 911 woorden.
De taal ervan is Engels en het aantal woorden bedraagt 911 woorden.
Things fall apart
Chinua Achebe
180 pages
1 Year of first publication: 1958
This book is called 'Things fall apart' because it is about a man's life and the things he has reached in life and it gradually falls apart.
2 I think the part that he hanged himself appealed to me the most because I didn't really expect he would do that.
3 I don't really know, I found the book quite interesting
4 I wouldn't want to be Okonkwo because he looses everything, but then al the other characters are invaded by white men. So I wouldn't want to be any of them.
5 I hated the white men, especially the white men who In the end decided on capturing Okonkwo and his friends. I hated them because they had no respect for another's culture.
6 The story is set around 1890-1920. It is in that time that white men explored Africa.
7 In one way I was satisfied and in another I was not. I was satisfied because Okonkwo didn't need to suffer anymore, but I was unsatisfied with that this is real life and these things really happened.
8 In the beginning of the story Okonkwo is very optimistic and faithful in future. At the end of the story he has given up on everything. He has learned that not everything can be like he wants it to be.
9 I would call it something like a Drama
10 The turning point is when Okonkwo is banned from his village. After this everything starts to go wrong. The white men come, he looses everything gradually.
11 About 10-15 years have passed between the beginning and the end of the story. He had been banned for 7 years, and before that at least 2 years had passed and after that at least1.
12 The writer tries to tell the reader about how things happened when the white men came and how things were before they came. The theme is change, because things changed so drastically throughout the book and nostalgia because when things started to change Okonkwo always longed for the good old days.
13 It is in the perspective of a person who is not in the story but knows everything
14 The story is set somewhere in a region of Africa. It is important to know where the story is set because otherwise you won't understand the story.
15 I would recommend this book to classmates because I think it's a very interesting story. When I started reading I couldn't really stop.
16 I would give it an 8,5. But off course you can't give a mark for what has happened to someone. But still Achebe presented in a very good way which kept you reading.
17 In the novel, Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo is a important figure who resists the attempts of the white colonizers to impose on his clan a new religion and social order. Okonkwo's defiance stems from his fear of the white men's destructive potential on the social hierarchy and religion of the clan. Okonkwo's fear is presented when he first encounters the missionaries of the new religion in the village of Mbanta. The interpreter of the white missionary, "...was a man of commanding presence and the clan listened to him" (144). The fact that the clansmen are listening to the interpreter makes Okonkwo fear that some villagers might believe what the missionary is saying. This fear makes Okonkwo stay, in hopes of chasing the missionaries out of the village. Okonkwo's fear does not leave until several clansmen laugh at the missionaries and he feels there is no danger of anyone being converted. Okonkwo is fearful and violently resistant to the new religion because it has the potential of undermining the life long work of the clan trying to please the gods of it's ancestors. If Okonkwo was to accept the new religion, his sacrifices to the gods, like the killing of Ikemfuna, who Okonkwo loved as a son , would have been done in vain. Anyone from the clan who converts to the new religion seems to be saying that Okonkwo was wrong in killing Ikemfuna. Also the twins who are stuffed into earthenware pots and left to die in the evil forest would be dying for no justifiable reason. One of Okonkwo's greatest fears about the new religion is that it could destroy the social hierarchy of the clan. "None of his converts was a man whose word was heeded in the assembly of the people. None of them was a man of title. They were mostly the kind of
people called efulefu, worthless, empty men" (143). By joining the new religion, these "worthless" men are dismissing the social order of the clan, and gaining respect and power in the new society. In this sense, the underclass of the tribe are having a revolution, where the title holders in the clan are no longer respected, and the members of the underclass who convert are no longer "worthless " men. If the social hierarchy of the clan no longer existed, Okonkwo would lose his status and respect among the clan. By the end of the novel, many of Okonkwo's fears have been realized, and the social order of the clan is falling apart. The fear of the new religion and government, which causes Okonkwo to take the life of a white official, also causes him to take his own life.
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