Religious Readers

Marleigh posted a comment about the Igbo traditions and how Achebe wrote in such a way that she understood and supported the tribe's traditions. I felt the same way about their traditions, to the point that when the missionaries came in the story I had very strong feelings against them. I'm not very religious, so I was wondering if all readers, religious or not, felt the same way about the missionaries. I would think if you were religious you would feel the missionaries were right in their actions, and sort of be rooting for them during the story. Did religious veiwpoints affect the way you read the novel?

Masculinity

In the novel, Okonkwo decides to kill Ikemefuna because he does not want to appear weak in front of the other men of the tribe. He values masculinity very highly, and does not want to ruin his good image. I think this shows that the Umuofia tribe has a very skewed view of masculinity and courage. The real courageous thing to do would have been to remain home and not betray the trust of the one he loved, yet because of societal pressure, Okonkwo views staying home as cowardly. This skewed view can also be seen in the titles they take. All that needs to be done to take a title is to pay a certain amount, yet somehow these titles represent manliness to the tribe. 

Connections

In the process of writing my essay I did a lot of research on what the poem The Second Coming was really pertaining too. I found it so interesting that Achebe took this ancient ideas of Yeats' poem and translated them into a story. The poem actually scared me a little bit with its dark tone at the end. It just ends with this unanswered question of: Is the beast going to take down society? If you think about it, still today we have a million beasts in our lives that could awaken at any moment and change our lives completely.

Yeats Imagery

If you have a hard time understanding what Yeats is talking about, you might want to look into his past, and in turn, hermeticism, or at least the symbols. A quick look at tarot card interpretations might help as well.

widening gyre

This is something I was talking to my friend about and I thought it was really interesting. She pointed out the idea of the widening gyre. The first time I read the poem, I had no idea what a gyre was but after looking it up, I learned it was a circle or ring. I thought it was really interesting how this went with the book because after looking closely, there are several things that go in circles. For example, every year they plant the crops, harvest them, the have the festival where they eat the new crops. This repeats every year like a cycle. The wrestling tournament also happens at the same time every year as well as the cycle with getting married and having a kid, then they grow up and get married themselves. I found this parallel with the poem very interesting.

Interesting Points

I was trying to find a secondary source relating to The Second Coming and found this. It makes some really interesting points that I didn't notice before. http://users.humboldt.edu/jlwaters/thesecondcoming.html

Line 10

Just pointing out an error in the packet version of the poem, line 10 ends with the word "out," not "our." A quick Google search with several copies of the poem referenced confirms this.