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[deleted] t1_iyublhs wrote

Yeah Things Fall Apart was pretty amazing!

I love Chinua Achebe's writing style, at least the way he is committed to giving us, a western audience possible unfamiliar with the setting, a look into the life of Okonkwo's village while staying true to the plot.

I also loved the stories, and the mythical aspects of the people who were in masks that represented the gods, I found that really interesting. It just felt so real, and you could really immersive. The themes of honor and avoiding the mistakes of your father were very much present, and I thought that the last part of the book was really quite sad, and it makes sense for a character like Okonkwo to do something like that after his tribe had forsaken him, a sharp contrast to the earlier scenes where the tribe was one and strong, and now had been divided

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SublimeLime1 OP t1_iyuqrt3 wrote

I seen a lot of reviewers say that the bulk of the early sections are useless, as the colonialism doesn’t come until the second or third parts.

But it was the life before the white people arrived I found most interesting too! The mythology and ancient rules were so different to anything I had heard and I was so entrenched in the plot. Such a great read.

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OwlOfFortune t1_iyvpicv wrote

People think showing pre-colonialism is worthless? That's crucial to showing Oknokwo's struggles. It also really mirrors the last bit of the book where the officer is thinking about the importance of Okonkwo.

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SublimeLime1 OP t1_iyvtjrw wrote

I think a few people read books like this with the expectation of gory violence and oppressive colonialism from the offset. This book does take its time to establish the Igboland, before the British arrive later in the book.

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[deleted] t1_iyuqx3x wrote

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OkBey24 t1_iywmvc8 wrote

Things fall apart is precisely my favorite book because of the precolonialism parts. I’m an African, and in my experience in our history classes at school a majority of what we learned about our country was during and after colonialism. It was nice to read about a precolonial African tribe in detail

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