Ibo Marriage & Family System in Things Fall Apart

The following sample essay on “Ibo Community”: describing the marriage and family system of the Ibo, analysis of falling apart and Mr. Brown.

In the Ibo community, polygamy is an accepted practice. Okonkwo is a prime example of the typical male in the tribe. He has three wives total and many children. In the Ibo community, the more wives a man has the more masculine he is considered. The people of the community worship their ancestors very often.

Why did “things fall apart? ” Things fell apart in the Ibo community because of the outside influences coming into their village and changing their culture.

The Ibo had a lack of communication with the Christian missionaries. The religions of the two sides differed vastly and they could not truly agree on God or how to worship. The Ibo could not understand the Holy Trinity and they were being told that the statues of their gods that they believed were made by their one supreme god were fake gods.

To prevent the community from falling apart, the missionaries could have accepted that the Ibo would not want to change their religion and left the community alone.

Was Mr. Brown (the initial missionary) ethnocentric? Mr. Brown was extremely ethnocentric. When he arrived to Umuofia he immediately told the people of the Ibo community that they were worshipping false gods and they must accept Christianity. He says that the gods of the village are incapable of causing any harm to him for the way he speaks about them.

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He accepted everyone into the church, even those who were outcasts of the community and did not pay attention to the rules of the villagers.

I think the most important message in this novel is that some things and some people just aren’t meant to change. There are some people that are so set in their ways that when others intervene, it causes extreme problems. When the messenger at the meeting near the end of the novel says that the meeting is over, Okonkwo kills him immediately because he is so frustrated with the way his people have handled the missionaries since they arrived.