I didn't even read all the topic choices before knowing what I wanted to write about. As soon as I read "What forces are at play?", my mind just immediately connected ruffly 6 or so things together and if I even try to write about anything else, it's gonna be crap compared to a blog on this topic.
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe really started to bore me before I reached part 2. But then the story picked up from being about Okonkwo, the boring character and greedy try hard who already has been blessed with amazing work ethic and physical fortune (Including 3 wives, an entire complex with outer walls and inner homes, and strong healthy kids and plenty of food), to Okonkwo, the man banished along with his entire family for 7 years for accidentally shooting a kid. That is two pretty similar Okonkwos if you ask me, one which is rich and renowned for physical well being and anger in frustrating situations (In his body being built and in owning alot of physical items), to one which is now poor again but is still angry in frustrating situations along with being hard working to get back to his previous status.
The only thing that changes in either Okonkwo is how much he owns and where he now lives (Fatherland and then Motherland). Essentially, Okonkwo himself hasn't changed, but what he owns is what has changed. This is where I explain my chiropractors theory, which isn't solely on this book, but on life in general. My chiropractors name is Daniel McDonald, and he believes all things can be placed into 3 categories. These include...
Physical Things - Things you can touch. You can feel it with your sense of touch. It is physical and very real, existing in this dimension. You can control your own physical being.
Emotional Feelings - Things you can feel, but not physically. Emotions, thoughts, feelings are all examples of things in this dimension. You can control your emotional being.
Spiritual Beliefs - This one is the very confusing one, because it is very hard to explain.This includes beliefs, specifically your religion and "spiritual" beliefs, and things you have done for those beliefs. Like the other two, you can control your own spiritual being, this time by choosing what you believe in and what you do/are willing to do for your beliefs.
These three "dimensions" are intertwined and add up to what life is. Life is a mix of everything, and can not be enjoyed or even experienced with out some amount of all three being present and making up what we consider life. The reason that I order the 3 dimensions in this order is that they not only increase in complexity, but in how much they affect your life and your experience.
Physical things can affect you in the moment, being that they are in front of your face and that you can touch them. Emotional things can affect you in more moments then physical things, because it is how you act, and you are going to pay more attention to yourself then others. I hate to say that, being that I am pretty much saying we are all greedy and selfish, but humans tend to act just like that. Spiritual things, specifically beliefs, affect you the most as they are always present in your life. This is because physical things may or may not be there, emotional feeling may or may not be present because you may not have that emotion, but spiritual things are always present, being that they will always be present in any situation as they affect your decisions.
These 3 things that make up life are represented well in the book as well.
For instance, Okonkwo's tribe bases peoples physical worth on how much a person owns, shown when the people of the village believe that Okonkwo is clearly cut out for great things and describing him with, "He was a wealthy farmer and had two barns full of yams, and had just married his third wife" (Achebe 8). Notice how he is not necessarily known for being kind or wise, but for how successful he is in how much he owns. Later, this is further increased in understanding when Okonkwo accidentally shoots the young boy, saying that, "In these seven years he would have climbed to the utmost heights. And so he regretted every day of his exile" (Achebe 162). This shows how focused people, including Okonkwo, are on physical worth.
The tribe is also focused on peoples attitudes, shown well on page 4 when Okonkwo is characterized as having "...a slight stammer and whenever he was angry and could not get his words out quickly enough, he would use his fists" (Achebe 4). The book also states that the tribe characterizes people by there personal gods and chi, but that can be debatable as it could be in the emotional or spiritual dimension.
Comparing both the physical and emotional things in this book to the spiritual side of this book, I immediately make the connection of how the entire climax of this book is based on events which are further based on spiritual beliefs. This is shown through the big scene where Okonkwo decapitates one of the missionary's (Who I believed to be his son, Nwoye), which we are led to believe is done through Okonkwo's shear hatred for the Christians and what they stand for. He beheaded him completely, without any second thoughts, "Okonkwo's machete descended twice and the man's head lay beside his uniformed body" (Achebe 204). My theory is that this messenger was his first son, Nwoye. But even if it wasn't/hadn't been Nwoye, his son who had left his family and father for a different religion, Okonkwo was still described as "trembling with hate" and "unable to mutter a word" for this was how much he despised the missionaries and what he described as their stupid and insane beliefs.
As I have argued, I believe that life itself can be split into 3 things, being physical, emotional, and spiritual in creation or description. These 3 things not only make up life, but they are also the forces of this book since this book is a story with life being in it and being intertwined throughout it.
After Blog Thought
Remember how Okonkwo hangs himself at the end (Crappy ending if you ask me)? Well, I was looking for a quote in the book when I came across a part where he talked to Obierika. Okonkwo told Obierika that he could not thank him enough, and the way Okonkwo could have thanked him kept rising drastically until it came to where Okonkwo could thank him by killing himself. Okonkwo then said, "forgive me", and they proceeded to drop the subject.
At the end of the book, Obierika is the one who explains to the Commissioner about how it is illegal in their culture to touch the body of one of their tribe who has killed themselves. And is it just me, or is Obierika really salty towards the Commissioner and his men? But that is another blog or another day.
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