Society in Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achedes Essays

Society in Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achedes The world in Chinua Achedes novel, Things Fall Apart, was a society in which males had control of everything, and the women had control of nothing. As wives, women were seen as property, rather than as partners to be loved and cherished. The men of the Ibo tribe usually married more than one wife because the more wives, yams, barns, and titles each Ibo man held, the more successful he was considered. These possessions determined a mans social status. An example of a man looking for social status in these ways was Nwakibie, who had three huge barns, nine wives and thirty children, and the highest but one title which a man could take in the clan(18). The men controlled the†¦show more content†¦However, he favored his daughter, Ezinma, the most out of all his children. If Ezinma had been a boy [he] would have been happier. (66) Okonkwo thought Ezinma had the right spirit(66) to be a man because she was strong and loyal. The society that Chinua Achebe described in his bo ok, Things Fall Apart, is also based on agriculture. The major crop the Ibo tribe grew was the yam, which was said to be the symbol of virility. The coco-yam, which was a smaller size and had a lesser value than other yams, was regarded as female. The yam also stood for manliness, and he who could feed his family on yams from one harvest to another is a very great man indeed (33). To produce a great harvest, the Ibo farmer would have needed a lot of help. The women ran most of the workforce by farming, tending animals, and raising the children so that they could help out on the farms. The yam demanded hard work and constant attention from cock-crow till the chickens went back to roost. The young tendrils were protected from the earth-heat with rings of sisal leaves. As the rains became heavier, the women planted maize, melons, and beans between the yam mounds. The yams were then staked, first with little sticks and later with tall big tree branches. The women weeded the farm three times at definite period in the life of the yams, neither early nor late (33). Here, the women can be compared to slaves because they did most of the work on the