The Struggle With Change In Achebe's Things Fall Apart
“If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.”
(Angelou)
The white missionaries coming to the igbo tribe really pushes the tribe’s unity to the limit. In Achebe’s book Things Fall Apart the Igbo tribe goes through many trials with change. Okonkwo is having an internal battle with himself while everything around is changing around him. Everyone he assumed wouldn’t change had adjusted their mind-set, and no one agrees with him in his violent approach to get rid of the white missionaries. The missionaries made everyone turn against what they knew and things fell apart.
One major piece to this change was the religion. This new concept of another god and the compassion that comes with him, pulling in Nwoye
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This government included a court of law to arrest those who break their new laws and a prison for the law-breakers. This was something very foreign to the way the people in Ufomia did things. This wasn’t what disturbed Okonkwo though. It was that his fierce and tough clan let these missionaries come up from under their feet and destroy all the tribe’s formation till they have to act “weak like women” otherwise they will be destroyed. Just like Okonkwo said “[...] and he mourned for the warlike men of Umuofia, who had so unaccountable become soft like women” (Achebe 183).
Finally the craziness of change settles down, and Okonkwo can relax, until he and six other leaders are arrested and tortured in prison until a fine is paid off by the tribe. This infuriated Okonkwo to be looked down upon and seen as a weakling. He then declares that they must kill the white men immediately. “[...] I shall fight alone if I choose” (Achebe 201). He then beheads a messenger of the white men, though no one tried to help him in his fight. In the realization that his beloved land Umuofia wouldn’t help him in his war, Okonkwo took his life in the most shameful way you could.
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