Things Fall Apart (Part 4)
AWARM welcome to you as we continue to work together for your success. By now, you would have written a number of essays in this subject, as directed by your teachers. This week, even as I hope that you have been getting good grades, I want to quickly share some reminders of how to do this with you.
There are certain words that direct how you answer questions, and I want to be sure that you are familiar with them. You must become confident that when you see a question that asks you to comment on or compare something to something else, you know exactly what to do. Before you begin to write an essay, you should take enough time to understand what you are being asked to do. Read the whole question before you say to yourself, ‘I can do this’. You do not want to waste your time starting a response, only to find out that after two paragraphs, you cannot proceed because you do not have all the information you need to do so. This is one reason it is a sound idea to make a plan, for in doing so, you will find out if you know enough to do justice to the question.
Essays in literature are like essays in any other subject. You need, in writing one, a beginning, a middle, and an end; in other words, an introduction in which you state your position and briefly outline your points of discussion; a body in which you discuss the three or four points on which you base the position you are taking, and the conclusion in which you sum up your arguments and restate your stance. You do not need to skip a line or lines when you start a new paragraph, nor do you need to itemise each section of an answer with the letters a), b) or c). In fact, I want you to remember that the itemisation a), b) or c) is there only to help you remember to deal with each part of the question in a separate paragraph.
You do remember, don’t you, that one poetry and one short-story question that will be on your exam paper will require you to draw on two poems and two short stories for your answer? This is why it is a good idea to categorise the poems and short stories as you study them. In other words, if the theme or main focus is, for example, war or racism or religion in two or more poems or short stories, do make a note of this. You can also take it a step further by thinking about their similarities and writing them down for future reference.
As promised, we will turn our attention once again to Things Fall Apart, and this time, our focus will be on religion. Religion permeated Umofian life. You may ask my reason for saying this, and I will tell you that as a people who believed in many gods, every aspect of their lives was governed by one god or the other. Importantly, one member of the tribe who sinned could bring down punishment on all, unless atonement was made. There was belief in a main or chief god, Chukwu, who had several minor or lesser gods that he had made to help him carry out his tasks. Chief among them was Ani, the goddess of the Earth. She was a powerful deity. Umofia was a farming community, and as such, people naturally gravitated in belief to the one who had the power, as they thought, to make their crops bear abundantly. This was not the only reason for their devotion to the earth goddess, for she was the resting ground for the deceased. How important was this? Consider Okonkwo’s punishment for beating his wife during the Week of Peace. (I hope you noticed that he was not punished for wife beating, but for when the heavy beating took place.) Someone who died of a wasting disease, like Unoka, or committed suicide – a grave sin – could not be buried in the earth. That would be an insult to Ani. Moral standards and conduct were set and judged by Ani, this god of fertility.
Each person had a personal god called a chi. It appears, however, that a chi was not independent of the person whose god it was, as it could be influenced by the human being. Then there were the household gods in which they believed and to whom they prayed and gave gifts.
You have met the egwugwu who dispensed justice in legal matters. Even though many persons must have known or at least speculated about the identity of these “judges”, they were feared and respected because they represented the ancestral spirits who came out of the earth to do this work. It means that there was ancestral worship.
In addition, there were the Oracle of the Hills and Cave, with its priestess, Chielo. She appeared to have two sides to her – one as a normal friendly and compassionate woman, and the other as a fierce and unforgiving representative of the Oracle. The Agbala was also very powerful with many abilities attributed to him. These include being owner of the future and the ability to take human life. The most frightening egwugwu was the one who reminded one of the Agbala as he appeared to be coffinshaped and carried a foul and sickly odour. It is through him that we find out that the villagers believed in reincarnation.
People had faith in oracles and turned to them when they needed answers about anything that they did not understand. The gods were feared, for they had the power to overturn and even destroy lives. It is worth remembering that when one person sinned, all would be punished unless the sinner paid for his crime, as prescribed by the representative of the god that was offended. Finally, Chukwu was only consulted when the lesser gods failed to deliver.
From this and your close reading of the text, I believe that you are getting an understanding of how religion worked among the Umofians.
Until next ‘class’, please be safe, and God bless!
Beryl Clarke is an independent contributor. Send questions and comments to kerry-ann.hepburn@gleanerjm.com