Things Fall Apart

Umofia is a place where people have a different life style then there is in a modern society. People in Umofia are both civilized and savage at the same time. There are both of the civilized and savage sides of the society but mostly they are old-fashion minded. For example, in Ibo society they do not value women at all, they are not equal by laws, they do not have any protection or any rights, etc. I am going to define the terms civilized and savage firstly.

First of all, a civilized society has laws that are fair for people’s own protection.

In a civilized society, people must be free and be able to make their own decisions. In Ibo society, sometimes-even men are not allowed to give their own decisions and I think Umofia is only civilized in some ways. In a civilized society, each person have equal rights like; speaking and thinking freely, expressing freely, being able to make your own decisions.

Also, there must be certain rules, laws and punishments to protect the people. In Ibo society there are no laws to protect people and only men and high status people have their own freedom.

For example, women have no value or any kind of right to protect their selves, for men women are just able to give birth to children and do house jobs and men are beating them or the children heavily as they want. Secondly, a savage society is a society, which is not domesticated or cultivated, in other words kind of barbaric. In “Things Fall Apart” we can see in many ways that the Ibo society is not civilized at all and there is a savage system going on in the society. There is no justice between the people, the weak has no value among the society and only the strongest wins and gets some things.

The trials, social and family rituals, the marriage customs, preparation processes for food production, leadership in the community religious beliefs are all symbolizing the savageness in the society. In my opinion, Ibo tribes that Okankwo belongs to are definitely a savage community. Because they have different traditions, religion believes and they have no laws or rules to protect people. Being a civilized community is most importantly having self-protection. For example, the Ibo people who lives in Okankwo’s village have very uncivilized beliefs, such as killing twins, leaving sick eople to death, they do not give any value to women and they kill who ever they want to kill.

So we can see from here that they do not have any self-protection. The best example for that is Okankwo, he killed Ikemefuna to prove that he is a powerful men and he does not give anyone any value. They also have punishments for the ones who make mistakes in important events, such as The Weak Of Peace; in the weak of peace every bad habit is forbidden. When Okankwo beats his wife in the weak of peace he get punishment from the elders.

They believe more than one god and each person has their own chi. Also, they have different ways to avoid war. For example, when a girl got killed from Umofia in another village, to avoid from a possible war, the Ibo society wanted a virgin and a lag from the other village. In conclusion, Okankwo’s village is a savage community. People are not equal, they are violent and they believe only men are valuable. In my opinion, in a civilized community you need to be safe and have equal rights and laws to protect you. People who live in Umofia are all old fashion-minded.