Things Fall Apart - Religion (2)
Kuvakäsikirjoitus Teksti
- Chapter 13
- Chapter 14
- I can't believe that I've lost it all. I'm ruined!
- Chapter 16
- You worship false gods and have been fooled into believing a lie.
- The Umofians were in shock after the accidental murder of Ezuedu's son. Once Okonkwo, the killer, had been exiled from his land, the author writes that “[A large crowd of men] set fire to [Okonkwo’s] houses, demolished his red walls, killed his animals and destroyed his barn. It was thejustice of the earth goddess, and they were merely her messengers (124-125). The Igbo people see themselves as vessels sent by the earth goddess with the mission of carrying out her will over the clan and its quarrels, showing how intertwined religion is with Igbo life and tradition.
- After Okonkwo's exile, he returns to his motherland. He mopes and grumbles on the journey there, and even continues during his stay, with the narrator telling the reader that “A man could not rise beyond the destiny of his chi. The saying of the elders was not true—that if a man said yea his chi also affirmed. [Okonkwo] was a man whose chi said nay despite his own affirmation” (131) Okonkwo now believes that people cannot rise above their own fate, and that everyone has their limits, despite his faith and loyalty to traditional Igbo beliefs.
- Missionaries begin arriving in Umuofia, the first of whom is Mr. Brown. The narrator reveals that “[Mr. Brown] told [the Umuofians] that the true God lived on high and that all men when they died went before Him for judgment. Evil men and all the heathen who in their blindness bowed to wood and stone were thrown into a fire that burned like palm-oil. But good men who worshipped the true God lived forever in His happy kingdom (145). This immediate disagreement shows the English’s incipient misunderstanding and disrespect for cultures and beliefs that differ from theirs, and how religion is so important to some that it may define them as a person, their actions, and their impacts on the world.
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