Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

Religion can cause conflict between two parties. When conflict arises, a war may appear or the two parties can separate themselves to try and not interact with each other, but often times the religion is not the main problem. The problem is the people that follow their religion. In Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart, a conflict that arises when a group of strangers show up, and the Ibo tribe of Nigeria is forced to live with them and their new religion, Christianity. The one in charge of the Christian group, Mr. Brown, makes an effort to hold peace between them, things don’t go well after some people from both sides attempt to take matter into their own hands. Through Mr. Smith’s actions against the Ibo tribe, Okonkwo pushing away the

Smith’s actions against the Ibo which shows that having a rigid mindset will limit the actions towards the other party. Mr. Smith always disliked having the Ibo people present in His church. Mr. Smith “saw things as black and white. And black was evil” (184). He never even saw the Ibo as people, but more of something that will ruin the church. In his mind, there was only the good and the bad, and he was part of the good while the Ibo represented the evil. Even though he believes he is part of the good, his actions show otherwise when he was grateful of Enoch for unmasking an egwugwu. Mr. Smith had “looked at him and smiled. It was a wan smile, but there was deep gratitude there” (189). This conflict of not accepting Ibos make the situations even more hostile. His reactions show how Mr. Smith doesn’t want to even try to make good connections with someone from another religion. His actions deliberately try to isolate his group from the other group. Mr. Smith’s actions to stay away from the other religion allows him to isolate himself by his strict

Okonkwo always wanted for Nwoye to faithfully be committed with the Ibo religion, and it came as a huge shock to him when Nwoye showed up to his house as a Christian. Achebe wrote, “Okonkwo had driven him away with the threat that if he came into his compound again, he would be carried out of it” (182). Okonkwo hates the Christian religion that he believes is ruining everything. With Okonkwo chasing his son away after his became Christian, it shows how he puts his own religious beliefs over his family which further isolates him from his family only because he doesn’t accept Christians. Okonkwo also doesn’t want to even bother with peaceful interactions with Christians. Achebe wrote, “Okonkwo’s machete descended twice and the man’s head lay beside his uniformed body”(204). The first interaction from Okonkwo with the messenger was death. He didn’t even know him and decided that the messenger needed to die, only based on his judgement of his religion. If Okonkwo kills every person from a different religion, won’t everyone stay