Things Fall Apart essay

    The theme to Things Fall Apart is that the white people’s conversion of the Ibo people was unjustifiably destructive. The white people first forced their way into the Ibo lands, then defied their customs, and lastly used the support of their government to convert them all.

    When the white people first started coming in, they started to force their way in. I think that it is really weird that they Catholic church was so stubborn in trying to get a church built on the Ibo’s land (Ibo or Ibo’s will be referring to the Ibo people(‘s)). If someone says no, it generally means leave them alone. The missionaries in a way forced the Ibo to let them stay. They endlessly asked and badgered again and again to get some land to build a church until the Ibo’s had had enough with them and gave them some land in the forbidden forest. “It was not very easy getting the men of high title and the elders together… But the missionaries persevered, and in the end they were received by the rulers of Mbanta.” (pg. 148) This quote shows how the missionaries continuously kept asking for the leaders to get together to give them land. Now, asking for land is fine, but when someone is asking everyday repeatedly, eventually you just want to say yes so that they will stop asking you. That is how the white people first forced their way onto the Ibo people’s lands and started the process of unjustifiable destruction.

    Next, the white people increased their favor in the Ibo’s  land by probing them wrong. What better way to do that then by defying their customs and showing them that the white people’s customs are correct? “[The gods]…set their limit at seven market weeks or twenty-eight days. Beyond that limit no man was suffered to go… At last the day came by which all the missionaries should have died. But they were still alive.” (pg. 150-151) “On one occasion the missionaries had tried to overstep the bounds. Three converts had gone into the village and boasted openly that all the gods were dead… and that they were prepared to defy them by burning all their shrines.” (pg. 154) These 2 quotes show how the white people and their faith are defying the Ibo’s customs. There are many more too. They killed a python, they save twins, they even tell those rejected people to cut their long hair and remove their mark on them. Now, personally I’m against killing babies and in this case twins, but the Ibo’s have been doing this for a long, long time. Centuries possibly. How would you like it if suddenly some random person comes in and tells you that everything that you know is wrong, he’s right, and you have to follow all of his unspoken rules and believe in his beliefs. Not going to happen right? It takes time and generations to change customs in people and even then it is like a merge of the customs. You can’t just change the way that a people live overnight.

    Lastly, the white people used “that” countries government to back them up in converting all of the Ibo’s. “These court messengers were greatly hated in Umuofia because they were foreigners and also arrogant and high -handed. They were called kotma…They guarded the prison, which was full of men who had offended against the white man’s law. Some of these prisioners had thrown away their twins…They were beaten in the prison by the kotma.” (pg. 174) They hurt the Ibo people to submit them to their ways even though they know nothing about those people and their customs which they have been living by for a long time. They just are backing up the white peoples beliefs only. Even near the end of the book, the kotma are sent by the church to break up a meeting of the clan so that they can’t plan against the white people. Okonkwo kills one of them before hanging himself but it just shows how they are backing up the church completely. If the Ibo would have gone to the kotma to break up a mass at church they would have refused and probably would have beat him/them up and thrown him/them all in jail because of that.

~Tesh

Osama Bin Laden free write

I had heard about Osama getting killed while I was playing Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2 on my Xbox (what irony). My dad had told me that something big was on the news and that I should go up and see. When I saw it I was kind of in disbelief. When I saw that it was in fact true, then I thought that it was weird that he was killed in a mansion next to a military base just outside the Pakistani capital. I had always imagined that he was being hidden by most of the middle east countries in a cave somewhere. I also always imagined that he would die somewhere in a cave from special forces. Then I got really worried because Al-Qaeda probably won’t let this go without some kind of retaliation. I mean, even if Osama wasn’t the true leader of them, he was the face of terrorism and of suicide bombers and of the extreme Muslims. This definitely hurts Al-Qaeda in one way or another. I mean, he was the guy who we couldn’t find for about 10 years even after he killed the most Americans on American soil ever. I mean, we find criminals who have committed smaller crimes faster then we could find Osama. It’s like Al-Qaeda is a gang that an army can’t take out or arrest. I just had a thought. You know how there are gang wars over land and drugs and stuff like that? What if we sent a bunch of gang members and leaders over into Al-Qaeda territory and had them start a gang out there? They could fight Al-Qaeda for the growth of Heroin, could fight them for land, and even for recruits. Kind of like fighting fire with fire. I guess we would probably be making a second gang like Al-Qaeda but at least they wouldn’t be suicide bombing people or at least people for religious reasons. So no more bomb threats on airplanes from terrorists, no more blowing up of U.S. agencies in other countries. Things would probably be a lot more peaceful over here. Then I guess that we would just be moving our problems to places where they already are having problems and in an area where there are a lot of key resources. I actually wonder what would happen if we and NATO just left the middle east. We just removed all troops and all support to the middle eastern countries and left them alone for about 20-30 years and just let them solve all of their own problems. Those countries would eventually form the way that the people want whether that means them retaliating or supporting someone. Ever since the end of WWI, the middle east has just gone crazy because the support and order they got from the Ottoman empire completely disappeared. Mostly it seems to me that the more the U.S. tries to help out, the more that we are getting them angry with us and getting ourselves into trouble with other nations.