Igbo Tribe In Things Fall Apart

The Conquest of the Igbo Tribe by the Simple-Minded White Imperialists

Prior to the arrival of European colonialists in Africa, the people who inhabited various regions of the continent had their own rich, distinct cultures, in which they thrived on their own. Things Fall Apart is the story of the British arrival to one of these tribes in Nigeria, and how their forthcoming brings death to that community. The Igbo tribe’s polytheistic religion is essential to the culture in this novel, and the coming of British Imperialists who force their monotheistic religion and culture upon this tribe holds culpability for the deterioration of such a community.

The Igbo tribe in Things Fall Apart thrived with its own civilization, customs and rich culture. Aside from the music, dancing, food, and society that brought the Igbo people together, the Igbo people’s religion brought the community together. Through their religion, the tribe held a form of government and functioned as a society. The religion brought order and structure to their lives in alongside the climate and agricultural life of where they lived. Their government was one based on the religion, exemplified when the narrator says, “it should be recorded

When Okonkwo kills the messenger who tells them to stop their meeting, Okonkwo knew, “that Umuofia would not go to war. He knew because they had let the other messengers escape. They had broken into tumult instead of action”(205). If the people of the Igbo tribe had come together to fight to protect themselves, they could’ve gone to war with the Imperialists, and even be able to have a chance at winning. But the missionaries had made the Igbo people so disordered that they could not come together in the name of protecting their tribe. This is why Okonkwo kills himself. The tribe is officially at the beginning of the end, distraught and disconnected as a result of European