I believe this entire book is summed up in this passage:
“You said one interesting thing,” said Mr. Brown. “You are afraid of Chukwu. In my religion Chukwu is a loving father and need not be feared by those who do his will.”
“But we must fear him when we are not doing his will,” said Akunna. “And who is to tell his will? It is too great to be known.”
Reading this book, I was never completely sure what it was about. As mentioned above,
Chinua Achebe takes his time in getting to the main conflict of the story. The first half of the book is meant to give the reader some sense of tribal life, but bored me quite a bit. This passage, however, is interesting because it is the critical point in the entire conflict of tribe vs. changing times. Here the
Christian religion meets the
tribal beliefs in a straight forward honest dialog. Soon after this point in the story, the wise
Christian missionary,
Mr. Brown is replaced and this dialog is silenced. This passage is one of the few times that the basic cause of the conflict become clear.
The fundamental difference between the two sets of beliefs can be seen perfectly here. As this book is written from the tribal perspective, the Christian missionaries are shown in a bad light. This passage personifies the arrogance of the missionaries, assuming they can know the will of God. Akunna personifies the tribes’ simple, perhaps naive point of view. They are a simple people who don’t take themselves as seriously as the missionaries. The religious conflict is caused by two different ways to interpret the will of God.
Religious conflicts arise because the very nature of religion is uncompromising. And that, kids, is what I got out of this book.
"An unspeakable amount of pain, arrogance, harshness, estrangement, frigidity has entered into human feelings because we think we see opposites instead of transitions."
--Nietzsche
node your homework!
Mr. Hakim Mansour
English 12
Buena High School