Paper Two draft

Religion has a major influence on the characters in the book “All Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe, it effects personality, culture, and laws; so when the missionaries introduce a new religion to the Ibo people, it slowly peels away the many layers of their culture until it get to the core and eventually strips them of their identity. (Religion creates the laws the law create the culture and the culture creates the personality)

In the book “All Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe the importance of religion is not only expressed through the religious practices of the Ibo people but its also presented in the individual personalities and cultural practices of these people. We can take our main character Okonkwo’s personality as an example, Okonkwo had a harsh early life because of his fathers gentle and lazy lifestyle, he did not get any inheritance from him so he had to literally create a life for himself and his family at a very tender age. This caused him to shield his heart from any form of emotional intimacy because he did not want to inherit any sign of weakness like his father; in the book it states “Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and weakness.” (9). Okonkwo does everything to be different from his father, who died a shameful death and was buried in the evil forest, even though his father had his personal chi (wooden god) he would visit the oracle in the hills to ask why his crops were not abundant or flourishing; he would seek consultancy to make sure he had not insulted the gods in any way. However no matter what he did whether it was prayer or consult from an oracle with out the expected hard work from an Ibo man on his crops the gods could not provide the abundance which he seeked. Unlike Okonkwo who was hard working and made sure to respect the gods by not only providing the proper sacrifices but also the hard work they expected an Ibo mad to do to flourish the land. The book states this about Okonkwo’s home “Near the barn was a small house, the, ‘Medicine house’ or shrine where Okonkwo kept the wooden symbols of his personal god and his ancestral spirits. He worshipped them on behalf of himself, his three wives and eight children” (10). He did everything in his power to make sure his gods and ancestral spirits were represented and respected, his struggle in his younger years and determination to never be like his father created his serious demeanor, life style, work ethics, and most of all in his faith, because with his faith came his culture and these are his roots which mean the world to him, so much so that he would kill for it. Okonkwo realized he was blessed in his life the book states “At an early age he had achieved fame as the greatest wrestler in all the land. That was not good luck. At the most one could say that his chi or personal god was good. But the Ibo people have a proverb that when a man says yes his chi says yes also. Okonkwo said yes very strongly; so his chi agreed” (19). Knowing all this Okonkwo was a man who had no limitations for his gods or spirits, even if they wanted to see blood on his hands or death upon his family he was willing to give his god way because he knew he would be ok because they were looking out for him, so when a murder was committed by the near by tribe, taking the life of one of Umofia’s (Okonkwo’s tribe) children, and as a result the tribal elders decided to keep the son of the murderer in the home of Okonkwo until the Oracle decided what she wanted to do with him, Okonkwo did not object, in fact he became found of the boy and when the oracle decided the boy must die, Okonkwo the same man who this boy has come to know as his father and he saw the boy as his son took part in the killing, and even boasted about it to prove that the sacrifices he made for the sake of the gods causes him no pain; the scene stated “He heard Ikemwfuna cry, ‘My father, they have killed me!’ as he ran towards him. Dazed with fear, Okonkwo drew his matchet and cut him down. He was afraid of being thought weak.” (43). Okonkwo’s religion influenced his culture, which was linked with the idea of the “ideal Ibo man” who must be strong, the provider, and the head of his home; Okonkwo does his best to fulfill all these requirement however, when it comes to the root of his culture, his religious laws were followed to the letter, in a way when he did such things it did not require moral values, which were the teachings of the missionaries. Okonkwo is a very strong willed man who dies not dwell on emotion, and is obsessed with the ideas of what it means to be a manly man. When his gods or spirits require something to be done, no matter how emotionally draining or painful he does it because it not only shows his loyalty to his gods but it also strengthens his lack of emotional attachment to his feelings and that of other, which he sees as a positive thing because that is how he believes a man should be like. The strong respect for his culture and strong personal views are all linked with his religion, it has become apart of him, it’s all he has allowed himself to know and he does everything in his power to protect those views.

Okonkwo is not the only person in the Ibo community who has strong religious values for his gods, religion is the basis of their culture and no one stands in the way of that. Another person who sacrificed for the sake of the gods was one of Okonkwo’s wives Ekwefi, whose only child is Ezinma Okonkwo’s favorite child. Chielo was the priestess of the Oracle in the hill, at times she would be a normal person in fact the book states she was friends with Ekwefi, and called Ezinma “my daughter”, however one night she comes to the home of Okonkwo and demands that Ezinma goes with her and from the moment of arrival everyone could tell she was possessed, she request for Ezinma in the dark of the night and takes her to the hills where the cave of her god is, the book states “She walked through Okonkwo’s hut into the circular compound and went straight towards Ekwefi’s hut. Okonkwo came after her. ‘Ekwefi,’ she called, ‘Agbabla (the god possessing Chielo‘s body) greets you. Where is my daughter, Ezinma? Agbabla wants to see her.’(71). With plenty fear in her eyes and heart Ekwefi asks no questions and makes no objections but allows her only child who she loves dearly to be taken away very late at night by a possessed woman very late at night. This shows her respect for the gods in her culture, not only that but it also exposes her personality as a woman who obeys anyone who uses fear tactics. Even though Chielo is a woman just like herself and also a friend she obeys her because she is afraid of the god which possesses Chielo’s body. Religion in this community is highly respected and has no boundaries even when it threatens what one loves, or what is nearest and dearest. Religion is deeply rooted in the Ibo’s lives, so much that is has become a part of their personality. Having such deeply rooted views, it is difficult for one to abandon them just because someone says its wrong, however when the missionaries arrive it is done by many of the Ibo people. When one takes a step back and anylizes the religious views of the Ibo people and the various sacrifices they made, we the people in the 21^st century would say this is primitive behavior, however when we consider the influence religion has on people we will understand. For example Christianity, the religion the missionaries were teaching the Ibo people, in the book it takles about Okonkwo killing his beloved step child, Ekwefi allowing her only child who she stuggled to conceive to be taken away by a possessed woman, and many other Ibo women abandoning their children in the evil forest because they were twins and twins were seen as a taboo in the Ibo culture. However, in the biblical story of an elderly man named Abraham and his barren wife Sarah a similar story is presented. Abraham longed for a child and when God finally blessed him with one, the same God also asks him to sacrifice that beloved child to him. Even though God prevents the killing from occurring in the end, Abraham was still willing to do it because of his faith. His faith had given him a new personality of humbleness and obedience, Okonkwo killed for his faith, Ekwefi allowed her child to be taken for the sake of her faith and many, many Ibo women abandoned their twin babies because of their faith, so sacrifices are not something new. People are influenced to do many things that would make no sense to those who don’t have or understand the faith, and even though Abraham went to great lengths to prove his faith to God, many people still practiced Christianity and have contributed many of the teachings in their culture as well, so you see even though he went to great extents many Christians see his willingness as greatness instead of murderous, strong faith also altars the personalities of its believes.

Religion also influences the laws practiced by it followers. In the Ibo society there are laws that condemn those who offend or disobey the natural laws of the land, there are laws for the season and laws for the ancestral spirits and separate laws for individuals, the laws are created by the elders of the land who either follow the practices of the ancestral spirits or enforce any law created by the gods at any time. For example one of the most commonly known ones in the Ibo society which the books speaks about is the fact that a man can marry many wives, women are scored for having twins, and another comely known one is women are allowed to speak up when they are being abused, the book gives two examples of how women’s rights are not entirely ignored in this society. The first example is when Okonkwo strikes his wife and nearly shoots her with his fire arm during the week of peace and gets an angry visit from the priest of the earth goddess Ani and is immediately commanded to cleanse his home with sacrifices or else he would hear the wrath of the earth goddess. The book states “We live in peace with our fellows to honour our great goddess of the earth without whose blessing our crops will not grow. You have committed a great evil.’ He brought down his staff heavily on the floor. ‘You wife was at fault, but even if you came into your obi(house) and found her lover on top of her, you would still have committed a great evil to have beat her.’…‘The evil you done can ruin the whole clan. The earth goddess whom you have insulted may refuse to give us increase, and we will all perish.’ His tone now changed from anger to command. (22). Another example is when a woman ran away from her husbands home to that of her brothers because her husband was beating her day in and day out, so her brothers went to defend her sister by beating the husband, so their was a huge trial before the nine ancestral spirits which represented the village of the clan. As a result of the trial the husband was told to compensate his wife and in laws and if his abusive behavior towards his wife shall not subside his genitals would be cut off . The book stated “Evil Forest began to speak and all the while he spoke everyone was silent. The eight other eqwugwu (ancestral spirits) were as still as statues. ’We have heard both sides of the case,’ said Evil Forest. ’Our duty is not to blame this man or to praise that, but to settle the dispute… ‘Go to your in-laws with a pot of wine and beg your wife to return to you. It is not bravery when a man fights with a woman.’ (66). This system of religious laws to protect the followers of that said faith is seen again when the missionaries come to spread their faith and develop their own system of government to protect their followers, the book states “But stories were already gaining ground that the white man had not only bought a religion but also a government. It was said that they had built a place of judgment in Umuofia to protect the followers of their religion. (110) . Even though both religions created laws to protect their followers they were going against each others religious practices, when ever the Ibo laws abandoned twins in the evil forest the missionaries would save them, when ever people were shunned from their clan the missionary took them in, even Okonkwo’s own son left his home, abandoned everything he ever knew about the Ibo religion, culture and law to follow the new religion, culture, and laws of the missionaries. These types of practices are not new to our generation, but they may be new to our culture, when we look at the religious practices of the people of Iran we can see the religious influence their faith has on their laws and government, even today. They have a religious leader called the supreme leader and instead of a congress they have something called the guardian council who vet (veto) laws that are not religious in their society. Their religion gives them order when it comes to the courts and the numerous cases present to the governmental leaders by women who want divorces because their husbands just like that of the woman who ran to her brothers home, beat them continuously. Whether the out come of the cases are fair or not that will all depend on which system of government you are dealing with, the culture and most important of all the religion you are involved with, so religion can also depend the fate of a life when it comes to law because it has a very large contribution when it come to laws and government.