Cultural Disrespects In Things Fall Apart By Chinua Achebe

Cultural aspects that we have and the way we deal with, will be completely different in other parts of the world with few similarities if any. For example in the book, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe it describes the setting and a third person perspective on the Igbo culture. Housing and gender roles are some of the cultural aspects that are notable in both the Igbo and western culture and are worth discussing some of the shared and unshared characteristics. There’s a wide range of cultural traditions around the world, housing and gender roles are no exceptions to this and the two are dealt with contrastingly with some resemblances.

Housing in the American and the Igbo culture are the complete 180 of each other. In the Igbo culture, Okonkwo(the
Similarly in America, women are also treated with the same disrespect with a few exceptions. Just over a few decades ago, women were expected to do only household chores, stay home, and were to listen to their husbands. Just recently it has gotten so much better, but things like our society’s rape culture, pay system, and double standards are still flawed. Women who get raped often stay quiet about it just to avoid slander and hate. Why do the people hate on the victim and not the actual rapist? It’s because men exist. They are the ones who rule the courthouse, and the “justice system”, they are the ones who dismiss it and disregard women. Men run America, after all. The Igbo culture surprisingly has a better justice system in dealing with who is actually wrong and they don’t have a bias, which is ironic because they don’t value women as much but they still get the job done right. Another thing is our paying system. Why is it that women earn 79 cents for every dollar made by men? Why does gender matter in this case when women can work the same job and same amount of hours as a man does but still earn less? Aren’t they both living, breathing humans? It’s crazy how being a woman in America is so difficult and if they're a minority it’s even 10 times more unfair. There are so many more aspects, but last things last, double standards. Although we’ve abolished the idea of women staying home and doing chores and men just out there working, there’s still some left. Females who date around are called a derogatory term and males who do the same exact thing aren’t called a degrading term. Males who are in touch with their emotions are called gay and have to toughen up, and everyone expects women to be emotional already. Things like these go hand in hand and each action is perceived differently for both genders. It’s a whole lot more but those are just some examples. So the treatment for men and women here are almost parallel to the Igbo