Changes In Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

Throughout our lives, we will all experience occurrences of political and cultural changes. How we cope with these alterations can set our paths for the near or far future, though it may not be clear at the time. In the autobiography Assignment: Rescue, a man by the name of Varian Fry voluntarily goes to Europe to try to help the men and women on the Gestapo’s blacklist escape before they are sent to concentration camps or killed. In the book Wild Swans, Jung Chang writes about three generations of women in her family, including herself, and their experiences in China before, during and after the Communist Revolution. Finally, the novel Things fall apart, by Chinua Achebe, focuses on a man named Okonkwo who, throughout the second and third
He is a very powerful and respected man among his tribe, and everything is going well until Christian missionaries arrive and change everything. This infuriates him. He rejects the new religion, and tries to persuade the tribe leaders to drive them out. Okonkwo believes, “…that until the abominable gang was chased out of the village with whips there would be no peace” (158). The way in which he deals with the alterations the Christians bring is by trying to fight against it. In contrast, the tribe leaders have a different approach. “’We should do something. But let us ostracize these men. We would then not be held accountable for their abominations’” (159). The tribe leaders cope by doing nothing because their belief is that the gods will take care of it for them. Okonkwo’s eldest son, Nwoye, copes very differently. He is captivated by the new religion. “It was the poetry of the new religion, something felt in the marrow. The hymn about brothers who sat in darkness and in fear seemed to answer a vague and persistent question that haunted his young soul…” (147). So, after hearing the Christians preach the new gospel and being beat by his father, he joins the