Movies, Plays, and Books

I happen to enjoy 20th century novels much more than Roman or Greek plays, or Shakespeare. That got me thinking. Novels express the inner workings of characters better than a play ever could. Okonkwo, for example, has an inner self and and outer self. The inner self is more emotional, but he appears to be an angry person from the outside. So why are movies and plays so much more popular than books? Movies and plays can't really tell me what people are truthfully thinking. Shakespeare tried, but I think he's a bore.

The average British person watches approximately 85 movies a year. That's pretty astounding. Estimating that every movie takes about two hours on average, your talking a good amount of hours. That's not counting plays, but of course theatre has been overtaken by TV, unfortunately. I do not read 85 books a year. Why? Maybe because books take longer to read than TV. That is a relatively good excuse, but I don't even read 42.5 books a year, around half the average amount of movies a British person watches a year. I guess what I'm getting at is books are much more involved and interesting than movies, in my opinion, yet much less popular. Things Fall Apart was especially awesome, yet it was much more popular as a movie than as a book! The same happened with Harry Potter and The Hunger Games. Why do we enjoy movies more than books? Humans are strange.

Does Things Fall Apart display magic realism?

As we read Things Fall Apart, I couldn't help but think about the novel we read over the summer, One Hundred Years of Solitude.  In this novel, we learn about true Latin American culture and struggles while also getting to experience the made up magical realism of the Buendia family and their family line and the experiences they go through.  We see a type of magical realism through the Ibo culture displayed in Things Fall Apart.  Much of the things they believe in such as the Earth Goddess, the Oracles, and Egwuwu are elements of magical realism.  Magical realism is where magic and made up elements are blended together with realistic facts from a time period.  Through Things Fall Apart we see the struggles that many African tribes went through during European Colonization of the area.  Achebe blends in the magic of the African's culture and religion with their interactions with the Europeans to really give the story a magical realism feel.  The European's lack care and respect for the African's culture which really led to the downfall of these tribes.

Gender: Bride Price vs. Dowries

I find it interesting that the Igbo culture uses bride prices as opposed to the dowries that we are so used to in Western culture. A bride price is the price paid by the groom to the bride or her family to marry the bride. In contrast, a dowry shows a reversal of the "transaction". In this instance the bride brings her dowry, or inheritance of goods, money, land, possessions, etc. to the marriage. I believe the fact that in the Igbo culture with the bride price, this allows the woman to be revered more and respected more. In this sense, the groom must pay a high price for the woman he loves because of how valuable she is. I like that the Igbo culture puts more emphasis on the woman, instead of like other cultures where the woman is just put aside and used in the house for cleaning, taking care of children, etc. Achebe allows the reader to see the value of the woman in the Igbo culture.

Okonkwo's Approach to Community

Okonkwo is not really a fan of the community gatherings that his Igbo tribe has from time to time, unless they are to discuss war or something else that he feels is "manly". For example, during the Week of Peace, he did not want to go see the festivals and wrestling because it involved the tasks of to many women and it was something, at least in his opinion, that a woman would do. He doesn’t like festival gatherings because they themselves are to female. He’s more like an individual in this sense and really only likes the manly wrestling that occurs. In regard to community, he desires to be a community leader, but he’s not really a good candidate for a “community leader”. Psychologically he is much more self-motivated and self-interested and relies on the belief that he is sole reason for his success. He does not give any credit to the supportive atmosphere that his clansmen and family have provided as some of the keys to his prosperity.

The Narrative Style in Things Fall Apart

Every since reading my independent study book, "The Sound and the Fury," I've looked at literature a somewhat of a new light in terms of how the narrative style can work to further advocate a message or motif within a novel. As it so happened, I was searching for supplemental information on Achebe a couple of nights ago and I came across something interesting. "Things Fall Apart" definitely seems to be in 3rd Person, omniscient, allowing us to see into the minds and perspectives of multiple characters. Now this might be a bit of a stretch. We've established before hand that African culture is in no way one single thing, in fact African culture is technically incorrect in this sense. It's not homogenous. Likewise, neither is the narrative style of Achebe's work in that it gives multiple outlooks from different characters.

Here's one of the websites I remembered when I was doing my research: http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/v4/v4i3a1.htm

The Irony Inherent in Okonkwo's Masculinity

I find it a little ironic that Okonkwo assumes the role of a man, someone who typically bears most of the responsibility in a family in terms of their welfare and such. According to Okonkwo, a man is  someone who needs to face reality with a sense of toughness, however their is implicitly toughness inherent in being mature and responsible. In fact on two separate levels of irony, Okonkwo not only fails to fulfill his responsibility and maturity as a man towards his family (Beats his wives and children, gets depressed in his motherland, subsequently makes his family depressed, not having compassion when doing so is arguably both mature and responsible) when he avidly advertises his "manliness" like a peacock, but Okonkwo defies this facet of a man by exercising what he believes he must do to assert that he is a man.

My Take on Okonkwo's Downfall.

My ideas don't necessarily differ from most in that we can all agree that Okonkwo's sense of masculinity fuels many of his bad attributes such as his stubbornness and excessive intensity. What we noted less was that he's putting all this pressure on himself to be a man, doing so to reject his father. I find it ironic however that he ponders upon how the free reign of the christian missionaries would have never happened in his fatherland, which he could associate with men, but would have to associate more with his father. This might be a rare instance in which we see Okonkwo thinking subconsciously, and illogically to the rationale of his ideals of being manly. He certainly does not reject his ideals, but this suggests to me that he's repressing a desire to live independently of anger towards his father. I'm not really sure how much sense this makes, and I'm not really positive I conveyed it the way I wanted to, but it's just a thought.