Chinua Achebe s Things Fall Apart - 1315 Words

Missionaries are a group of Christians whom are on a religious mission. Their sole purpose is to promote their religion in foreign countries. They ‘preach the gospel to all creation. ...and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit’ (Matthew 28:18-20). One of the places the Missionaries had travelled to is Africa. Both The River Between and Things Fall Apart were written during the independence period of Africa. Achebe’s novel, Things Fall Apart, published in 1958 tells the story of Okonkwo whom is a member of the Igbo Tribe in Nigeria and his constant encounters with the Christian missionaries. The River Between written by Ngugi was published in 1965 and tells the story of†¦show more content†¦This is portrayed in The River Between through the practise of female genital mutilation. Achebe however focuses on the Igbo traditions of marriage, children, trade, education and warfare. It is this difference of traditions that cause drifts within the tribes, for the African culture is completely different to that of the Colonies, where Christianity was ‘brought’ from. The River Between is set during the colonial period, a period of transition in which white European settlers were arriving in Kenya bringing with them their Christian values and traditions. However Ngugi focuses on the lost heritage of East Africa and does this through the literary form of storytelling. He sets his novel in the remote highlands of Kenya. This is significant as it relates to the legacies of the Kenyan tribal identities, and is considered the origins of where Ngai, the Kikuyu God had created Gikuyu; the first man and father of the Tribe and Mumbi; the first woman. By using the origins of the Kenyan Tribe as the foundations of his novel, Ngugi portrays that although Christianity and the missionaries have spread their ideologies within Kenya through colonisation, the tales told by each generation of Kenyans remained the same. However Things Fall Apart was set in the 1980’s and was written as a direct response to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. He states he wanted to â€Å"help [his] society regain belief in itself and put away the complexes of the