—Sanjna Puri
When I found out our next book was Things Fall Apart and that it was supposed to be an easier read than Remembering Babylon I was immediately happy. Even though I enjoyed Remembering Babylon, I was looking forward to an easier read. Before reading this book, I didn’t read the little blurb on the back but decided to go into the book having no idea what it was about. While I was reading, I was shocked by some of the things the character did that were considered very normal in this society. Some of these things were the frequent beatings of wives and children and the idea of having more than one wife. The main character, Okonkwo immediately fascinated me. We were told that his father was considered to be a failure in his community because he was always in debt and was not a very hard worker. In order to make sure people know he’s different, Okonkwo does anything he can to prove that he is an honorable man by making his family live in fear due to his temper. I think this is a great novel and should be considered as a great work of literature. This book’s narrative is from the point of view of the Africans. They aren’t viewed as “savages” but rather are able to tell their own story without the biased opinion of European settlers. This is very different from many other novels written about this time because most of them are written in the settlers’ point of view. Even though I don’t appreciate or agree with some of actions in the book, I do appreciate the fact that the Africans have their own narrative. This is why I think that this book should be considered a great work of literature and I look forward to finishing it and seeing how the novel evolves.
