C#

Hum10/A37

Gomez, Raheemah A.

July, 21, 2015

2015100341

A2
HOW IT USED TO BE

Things fall apart is a novel portraying a lot of things about their culture Igbo. It is such an
example of a post-colonial writing that depicts how people had lived that time, how a man and
woman are differed in treatments and in doing tasks, how people are punished accordingly, how
people conquers other people and most importantly, how political and cultural is affected by
peoples rank or status.
To start off with, the story revolves around a man named Okwonko. Despite of his
fathers failures and shameful acts when he still lived, he swore not to be like his father. He was a
strong and diligent man who was praised and respected. Unlike him, his father, Unoka, was a
lazy and spendthrift person. He owned many debts to other villagers. But when he died, it was
the cause of swelling that he died in a shameful way. It was their tradition to consult the Oracles,
or the so-called Oracles of the Hills and the Caves, about persons way of living. And it was
ordered he will be carried away from their land and into the Evil Forest and rotted away with no
proper grave given whatsoever.
Okwonko, having the burden of how his father was unlikable to the village struggled very
hard to get out of those nightmares. He worked hard for the highest-titled man on their village
and later on, he earned himself his own land and crops. He also became recognized due to his
strength such that whenever theres a conflict between their village and the others, he will be sent
to negotiate with them. Then, it will turn out that the other village will withdraw from war and
offer something or someone instead.

There was a part in the story where man was humiliated by calling them a woman.
Before, Unoka was called a woman due to his no-title status of living. Then, later on,
Okwonko, having the higher authority because of his strength and plentiful harvests,
embarrassed a man by calling him a woman due to his contradiction to Okwonkos statement.
This part of the story shows how a higher-status person treats the latter, like a racist.
After a few happenings in the story, another mishap occurred. It was when Okwonko had
beaten up his second wife during their Week of Peace of which is said to be a sacred week and
it is forbidden to talk or do ill to other during that time. The punishment can be said to be
civilized because before, told by Ogbuefi Ezeudu, it the past, people were dragged on the ground
through the whole village until he will succumb to death. But now, it changed to only offering of
a goat, hen, cloth and cowries at the shrine.
Then, his life began to get interesting for me when a villager had committed a sin by
killing a woman of Umuofia, the wife of Ogbuefi Udo. The sin was said to be punishable in two
ways: either you choose to be at war with the people or you will give one young man and a
virgin as compensation. The boy, Ikemefuna, was kept watched in Okwonkos house for three
years. Time passed and he got used to everything but things got bitter when the Oracle decided
for his fate. They decided to kill Ikemefuna. Okwonko had grown to like him, but he cant do
anything to go against the Oracles, to go against their cultural ways.
Now, the real story is yet to be unveiled. I became curious as to what was the authors
purpose in writing this story and how is it related to the concerns of post-colonial writing. I
found out that this book was written to break the stereotypes of Nigerian people, how the Britons
sidelined Nigerians cultures and to revise the history of Nigeria and Britain in their own
perspective. This story was written to show how Nigerian people used to live before the

colonization of British people, breaking those stereotypes about them, how much false history
there is in others writings and how it really used to be in Nigeria.