Saturday, March 5, 2016

Agbala

The high priestess is interesting to me. The day to day women named Chielo, is the Agbala God but this God is a he, so the god seems to me to have no bounds such as gender; it is neither a she or he. The village people refer to Agbala in the he form but the person "taken over" by the god is a women. 
As a side note I feel like this could play into how Okonwo sees masculinity and how the tribe sees it, thoughts? 

1 comment:

Jaclyn said...

Chielo is only the priestess, the voice of the goddess. She is the connection from the god to the human world. Agbala, however is a masculine god. The footnotes of TFA say that though the god is masculine, the priestess is feminine. It definitely is significant in the role of women in society. I'm not really sure how this would relate to Okonkwo though...I guess that he is used to revering masculine gods and does not take what women say as seriously as what men say, but he is forced to do so in this case. The tribe as a whole respects women, but Okonkwo definitely sees them as lesser than men.