Things Fall Apart Customs

Everyone has their own customs in which they are accustomed to, and that is no exception to the natives of both Nigeria and Australia. But one person 's customs, are likely to not align with another 's, and that is the cause of many problems. In the novel Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe, a little village in Nigeria, Umuofia, is alone and is most of the time peaceful with their neighbors, and they follow a specific set of customs, passed down from generation to generation. An important custom of Umuofia is to make a sacrifice before the farming season in order to have a successful yield. Achebe writes, “‘Every year,’ he said sadly, ‘before I put any crop in the earth, I sacrifice a cock to Ani, the owner of all land. It is the law of our fathers. I also kill a cock at the shrine of Ifejioku, the god of yams’” (Achebe 17). This shows that the Ibu people are polytheistic, and are respectful towards their gods. Unlike the Ibu people, the white settlers are

This quote shows that the white men had no respect towards both the culture of the Ibu people, and the Ibu people themselves. That extreme amount of disrespect was one of the key reasons why the white men found it so easy to take over the natives. Another example of how customs and culture were taken away from natives was in Australia with the aboriginal people. In the film, Rabbit Proof Fence, by Phillip Noyce, it tells of the story of three little girls who were forcefully taken from their homes, and their journey of making it back. In the film, the aboriginals were living alone peacefully, and were raising their kids, as culturally appropriate to them, but the settlers did not see it that way, they wanted to make the half-caste children become like them, and serve the whites (Noyce). The reasons that these two works are similar, is that the natives of their own places, were suddenly overpowered by these people, who thought they were better, and had their culture and the customs they practiced, stripped from