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Book Report On African American Culture

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I had first heard about Achebe a few years back while doing a report on African American culture, but I never thought I would read any of his work myself. When I saw the book for myself I was surprised that a well-known novel like that could be so short in length. As I started reading the story of Okonkwo, an Igbo warrior in West Africa who is a hero amongst his village, I was shocked at the differences between pre-colonial Africa and the world today. Okonkwo’s people are farmers, their way of life is greatly influenced by their past ancestors and is a democratic-like society. Life is not easy but it is simple. At first, I was not used to a world with brutal and life-threatening challenges, where death and sorrow are common, where spiritual …show more content…

Although he fits the cliché of a brave and noble hero, he is not all that perfect. After accidentally killing a member of his tribe, the wife-beating society decides to exile him. Upon his return, there seems to be a great change to his village. Missionaries and colonial people have arrived. This is where the story really took off. I began to compare and contrast the different worlds because of Achebe’s depiction of how people used to think. It was honestly mind opening to think about how the human mind has evolved its style of thinking in such a short amount of time. Okonkwo is a perfect representation of the “old world” while the missionaries are the “new world”. Okonkwo does not approve of the missionaries’ religion and refuses to even consider changing his ways. Okonkwo’s life begins to fall apart. The ties that used to keep the village together are now gone and there seems to be no stability in the world. Achebe never shows any bias to how to story went down, he simply tells it as is. This gives the reader and better understanding of Achebe’s characters. Personally, my favorite aspect of Achebe’s writing is that the story was simple and did not seem to show any sort of bias. This helps not only understand characters but see how someone would react in that scenario. Throughout the entire story the reader is engaged to see how Okonkwo will …show more content…

The most common theme I found was adaptation. Throughout the entire story (and most of Africa’s history) the people of Africa are constantly adapting to some sort of environment whether it’s the climate, the wild, or in some cases other human beings. I feel that Okonkwo was a way of showing the reader how much of a gradual change colonialization really

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