Things Fall Apart

English oral presentation

Cultural strengths of the Ibo society before the invasion of the colons.

The novel “Things fall apart” by Chinua Achebe describes the social and cultural traits of a culture based on the principles of labor and masculinity, conformity and kinship and finally on solid juridical system.

The worth of a man was measured by his strength and the amount of work he could accomplish and how efficiently feed his family, the concepts of masculinity is strictly related with the idea of labor as something of great importance that distinguished the role of a man from what was considered the worthless role of the woman.

“Yam stood for manliness, and he who could feed his family on yams for one harvest to another was a very great man indeed”.p33

The repetition of the word “yam” strengthens the parallelism between the idea of manliness and the symbolism of yams as exhausting work. Furthermore Okonkwo, who at the beginning of the book, embodies all the quality if the strong titled family man, “worked daily on his farms from cock-crow until the chicken went to roost”p.13, the af the long fatiguing day that every farmer had to sustain in order to feed his family, his work thought was not a pure expression of physical strength but also required experience and knowledge, those qualities that Okonkwo ed learned all by himself , with his own strength, before the harvest “he looked at each seed carefully to se whether it was good for sowing’. This cultural feature is historically one of the fundaments of all the greatest civilization, and of the modern society. For example the first article of the Italian constitution says:”Italy is a democratic republic based on labor”.

Conformity is another extremely important trait of the Ibo society and culture .The writer gives us a concise portrait of the social organization of the Igbo, on several levels. We see that the town is not ruled by a chief, but by a general assembly of all the men:

“Every man of Umofia was asked to gather at the market place tomorrow”p.9

The diction of the word man that recalls the concept previously described of manliness and power and the use of the word every symbolizes how every titled man had a part in the political and juridical life of the tribe. Once again this recalls the idea of a modern democracy, a political system where like in Umofia “many other man”p.10 can freely speak. This is not although a individualistic society but all the man of the tribe contribute together to build the unique identity of Umofia, that identity and integrity that in many parts of the book is shouted as “Umofia Kwenu”

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Justice is another powerful preoccupation of the novel. For the Igbo, justice and fairness are matters of great importance. They have complex social institutions that administer justice in fair and rational ways:

“Our