Saturday, March 5, 2016
In God We Trust?
The gods in Things Fall Apart confuse me. It's a strange relationship/trust system between the people and their gods. Usually in religions, it is understood that you are supposed to entirely trust your God no matter what. In the situation with the priestess, they do not fully trust their God. The mother follows the priestess all the way to the cave and then waits outside because she is worried about the child. Okonkwo also shows up and despite what he says I believe that he was also worried about his daughter. If they had had full faith in their gods they wouldn't have worried about the daughter and what the priestess' intentions were.
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4 comments:
I agree with you in the fact that we are supposed to believe fully in our gods but even in real life we question our beliefs. I don't think anyone trusts god completely. If he decides to take my child away from me in the future I would follow to see where he was taking him/ her. I agree that we should blindly follow God but I think it is easier said than done. When looking at it from an outside perspective it is easy to say that you don't know why they aren't trusting in their gods. When I read this passage in the book I put myself in Okonkwo's shoes and I would be scared myself, I wish I could say I would be fully trusting but I don't know if I could be.
I kind of believe that the whole scene with the priestess taking the daughter is more of a human trust issue. I think that, especially with this case, in which a human friend of theirs is actually channeling the goddess, the struggle to trust the friend rather than the goddess. No matter what, some humans will always have underlying evil intentions. As some people say, you never can trust someone. On top of this issue, it is, after all, their daughter being hauled off into the dark forest. Any human parent would be worried, religion involved or not.
I think Okonkwo and his wife do fully trust in their religion at this stage. I think that's why they stay a respectable distance away from all the action. They are just being normal, caring parents, making sure their daughter remains unharmed by another human being.
I totally agree with Madison.
We should notice that when Ekwefi arrives at Agbala's cave and sees Chielo carry Ezinma into a small entrance, the narrator says,
"As she stood gazing at the circular darkness which had swallowed them, tears gushed from her eyes, and she swore within her that if she heard Ezinma cry she would rush into the cave to defend her against all the gods in the world. She would die with her."
At this point, Ekwefi does not care about any gods that may or may not exist. All she wants to do is to protect her child, who has been taken by another person into a dark cave.
The gods in Things Fall Apart remind me a lot of the relationship that we see in Greek mythology. The people fully trust and believe in their gods, but they also know that the gods will do as they please and take human lives for whatever reason suits them. As long as they stay in good favor of the gods the gods will be good to them in the long run, but it seems that, like the Greek gods, they have their own impulsive personalities. And therefore it wouldn't be uncommon for the gods to take a life for either what would be the good of the community or simply as a sacrifice. I wouldn't trust those gods either.
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