What might be good for one person might be bad for others and what might be bad for one might be good for others. This and more were my realizations while reading the novel Things Fall Apart written by Chinua Achebe (1958/ 1992).
I found the following African cultural practices as depicted in the novel unique. First is their practice of keeping a Week of Peace “when everyone had to be kind to each other” and is done a week before they plant yams (p. 15). W hen someone breaks it, he/ she is punished with either kicking him/her around the streets until he/she dies or he/ she gives gifts to the Earth Goddess as in the case of Okonkwo (p. 18).
Second is a wrestling match conducted every first day of the New Year as a way to celebrate it (p. 18). Third is their blind obedience to their “clan god, Oracle of the Hills and Caves” in killing a person because the Oracle says it must be done (p. 24).
Fourth is their belief that it is bad luck to have twin babies and so a mother should put them in pots to be thrown into the Evil Forest (p. 28). Fifth is their custom of castrating a clansman who has committed a male crime (a crime that is intentionally done) and a female crime (a crime by accident) from the clan for seven years after which he can return (p. 41).
Sixth is their destruction of everything a man has built if he has committed a male and female crime against the Earth Goddess. This is considered their way of cleaning the land from the blood of the person who was killed (p. 43).
Seventh is their belief on a holy snake which is said to have come from the god of water and if any person kills it, he/ she should say special prayers to the gods and give the animal an expensive burial (p. 66). Lastly is their belief that a man who has committed suicide cannot be buried by his own clansman because his body is bad and he can only be buried by strangers (p. 84).
The inhuman practices of the African people against their own selves and their clansmen is the focus of Achebe’s novel which is quiet different from how Africans are maltreated by white men in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899). Indeed, what might good to one is not what it is for others.
Reference
Achebe, C. (1992). Things Fall Apart. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. (Original work published in 1958).
