Skip to main content

Thesis Statement Assignment

Prompt: With reference to Things Fall Apart, show how sub-plots or secondary characters contribute to the reader’s understanding and appreciation of the work as a whole.

Individual Points:
  •       The conflict of religion, showcased in the latter part of the story, is exercised mainly through secondary characters and subplots. For example, Nwoye’s decision to convert, Enoch killing the sacred python, and the whole subplot of the church and the village
  •        Ikemefuna as a secondary character, his killing showcases Okonkwo’s devotion to his culture; he puts his personal feelings aside. Also, his killing puts a strain on Okonkwo’s and Nwoye’s relationship. Furthermore, Ikemefuna, an innocent in the conflict, is killed for a crime he had no part in. This showcases the harsher side of Ibo culture
  •        Ekwefi and her daughter Ezinma: their subplot, involving the idea of Ogbanje children. This subplot showcases yet another aspect of Ibo culture and religion. Various ideas on how to deal with Ogbanje children are shown in this subplot.

 Thesis Statement: Through its use of secondary characters and subplots, Things Fall Apart enables its audience to know and understand aspects of the Ibo culture and religion, which allows them to further appreciate Chinua Achebe’s work in the context it was written in.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

This is Water and Alice Munro Short Stories

Alice Munro’s short stories are usually about women and families from a suburban and or rural setting. She discusses topics such as gender roles and interpersonal relationships, usually from a woman’s perspective. What David Foster Wallace’s theory on education can do with this, is that it allows us, the reader, to adjust our perspective, to be sympathetic to the characters. Although I personally am not a girl growing up in a post-WWII Canadian small town, I can still relate to or at least empathise with the characters and their emotions that Munro has created. In Munro’s stories, her characters tend to have personal flaws or defy the tradition character ideals, for example the narrator in “Boys and Girls”, despite her desire to keep her role helping her father and dislike of the role women are designated for in her family, she ends up subconsciously transforming, until she starts to fit the mould of what her family and society says a woman should be. While we, the audience, may expec...
4 comments
Read more

Ibo Background Assessment

Note: Written from a non-Ibo person perspective, however the person has knowledge of what the Ibo culture is and what their achievements are and is speaking on behalf of it at the Royal Colonial Institute’s annual dinner. Set in the Late Victorian era, as the assignment suggests. Words in-between this: [ ], are explanations of phrases, and would not be said in the actual speech.             Greetings, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Royal Colonial Institute. As you all know, this is a time of great change in this world. In the span of 100 years we’ve gone from walking on foot and horseback, to being able to get to Edinburgh from London in only 8½ hours whilst sitting, in relative comfort. Despite losing America a century ago, the British Empire has grown immensely since then, acquiring massive territories in Africa. Truly, the Sun never sets on the British Empire. But despite your dominance and hegemony over the world, the human...
3 comments
Read more

Podcast Assignment

In class we had to do a podcast about an endangered language. My group, Lingo-radio, featuring Azim, Seo Jung, and myself, did a podcast on Romansch, one of the four official languages of Switzerland. We went for a conversational/natural type of podcast, and based our dialogue on bullet-points, rather than a strict script. Here is the file:
2 comments
Read more