Essay on Brutalities of African Society in Chinua Achebes Things Fall

Brutalities of African Society Exposed in Things Fall Apart David Carroll writes, of the falsehood Things Fall Apart, This incident is not only a comment on Okonkwos heartlessness. It criticizes implicitly the laws he is too literally implementing... (Carroll) The incident that David Carroll refers to is the death of Ikemefuna. Ikemefuna was a immature boy who was handed over to the small town of Umuofia as compensation for the murder of one of that villages citizens. He is handed over to Okonkwo, a great man in the village, to whom he gives every affection. The brief life with Okonkwo and death of this innocent young man, and the life of Okonkwo himself, is a microcosm of life in Umuofia. Inconsistencies, brutalities, and conflict abound in notwithstanding the highest of Umuofian life. And as Ikemefuna is led off to be murdered by the man he calls father, the whole tribe and its values is being judged and found wanting (Carroll). When Ikemefuna premiere arrives in Umuofia, h e is housed with Okonkwo because Okonkwo is a great man in the village. He had reached his prime and was a man of wealth. Ikemefuna quickly befriended Okonkwos eldest son and began calling Okonkwo father. Soon, however, this be peace and civility in the village and the life of the villagers disappears. Okonkwo receives a message from the village elders that the boy, the towns innocence, must be killed off. The boy is lead off to the slaughter tout ensemble unaware of his fate, and with his father in the company of the killers. When a machete is drawn and the black pot atop Ikemefunas head is cut down, the boy runs to the man he loved as father. It is he who, lacking the courage to confront the others with his love for the boy, draws his machete and... ...e on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart (Achebe, 176). The village of Umuofia held to backward laws and values that destroy innocent children (Achebe, 146). The tribes innocence had to die in order for thos e who survived to mature. Although Umuofias peak of innocence may have been when Ikemefuna was handed over to the village, still its maturity would come through and through the death of Ikemefuna, the tribes innocence, at the hands of those the tribe called father. Things Fall Apart clearly illustrates the faults of the African system and way of life through the series of catastrophes which end with his Okonkwos and Umuofias death (Carroll). Works Cited Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. New York, New York Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc., 1994. Carroll, David. Chinua Achebe. New York St. Martins Press, 1980.