Things Fall Apart Research Paper

Nwoye’s before and after missionaries Before the missionaries came everything was fine and normal, but after they came some people changed and some stayed the same. Everyone had a different reaction, whether it was a positive or a negative one to the missionaries being there. Nwoye is one of the many that changed when the missionaries showed up. In Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart not everyone had a positive experience with the missionaries being there like Nwoye did. In the beginning of the book Nwoye didn’t have a very good life, his father Okonkwo was abusive towards him and he thought that Nwoye was lazy, and they weren’t close. Chinua Achebe writes “...Was already causing his father great anxiety for his incipient laziness. At

Chinua Achebe writes “Then something had given way inside him. It descended on him again, this feeling, when his father walked in, that night after killing Ikemefuna”(62). Nwoye was not that close with his father to begin with, and after that he despised him. At the end of the book when the missionaries came, they welcomed him, he became hopeful. At first he was going to church in secret, but when Okonkwo found out, Nwoye left to completely join the missionaries. Chinua Achebe writes “Although Nwoye had been attracted to the new faith from the very first day, he kept it secret. He dared not go too near the missionaries for fear of his father”(149). At the end Nwoye accepted the missionaries offer and went away to study and to become a teacher. In conclusion Nwoye was one of the few people that had a positive experience with the missionaries. Nwoye was able to get away from his bad past and his father, and he was able to explore a new faith and will become a teacher. In Things Fall Apart Nwoye was able to escape his bad past with the new faith and in real life some people use their faith to escape their lives. We can learn from this book to not use violence when a big change unexpectedly