The role and function of the family in society is fundamental. Indeed, family is the basic and natural unit of society. Being the building block of society, family represents the most important social group that can influence individuals' development. The lack or the instability of a traditional family structure can have deep impacts on individuals' growth and well being. The importance of the role of the family is emphasized in three of the works that we have studied this semester, namely Things Fall Apart, Tartuffe and The Narrative of The Life of Frederic Douglass. The novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe talks about the Igbo, an indigenous Nigerian people, and about a culture on the brink of change. Indeed, through the life of Okonkwo, an Igbo leader in the fictional Nigerian village of Umuofia, Achebe describes how the prospect and reality of change affect different characters. In the Igbo culture the family unit plays a fundamental role and the members of a family highly value the mutual respect for each other, a reverence for all past fathers, and unity. The father is considered not only as the head of the family and its provider, but the defender of its honor as well as the teacher of his sons. Indeed, the father has to …show more content…
Molière shows the negative and adverse consequences that can arise when Tartuffe, an imposter, enters a household and ruins the family dynamic present in it before his arrival. From the very moment Tartuffe appears he interfers with the concept of the family as as a stable unit, thus undermining the family structure. Orgon, the household of the family, puts him before his family,
“But he’s quite lost his senses since he fell
Beneath Tartuffe’s infatuating spell
He calls him brother, and loves him as his life
Preferring him to mother, child, or