Things Fall Apart - Rice University



Things Fall Apart

BioE EC Book Report

Things Fall Apart is a novel about the cultural changes of a small village in Nigeria, as it becomes increasingly exposed to Western standards, religion, and medicine. Okonkwo is one of the great men of the village Umuofia. He is a prized fighter, wealthy, hard-working, and above all he strives to show no weakness whether it be towards his family, his tribe, or the white missionaries.

In Things Fall Apart several health topics arise that we have discussed in our Bioengineering and world health class. The people of the region have traditional forms of medicine made from roots and barks of medicinal trees and shrubs, but mostly they attribute disease as a sign from the gods or ancestral spirits. “Ogbanje” is a child who has died and whose spirit re-enters the mothers’ womb to be born again. Miscarriages and premature deaths are explained by these spirits who return to be born again and die again in an evil cycle that torments their parents. In many developing countries and especially in Nigeria in the early to mid 1900’s, birthing conditions were unsanitary and unattended by a trained doctor or midwife, and as a result the infant mortality was very high. Babies who did survive the difficult labor and the first weeks of life without contracting a bacterial infection or virus, usually lived to adulthood. However the number of babies who actually did survive was very low, especially compared to infant survival in western civilizations at that same time period. Ekwefi, one of Okonkwo’s wives, had given birth to ten children nine of which died.

Although Okonkwo has high social status in his village, he also suffers from depression. His main motivation for success in life is his great despise towards his father, whom he considers to be a lazy and effeminate man. His desire to not follow in the footsteps of his father causes him to always act aggressive and masculine. When he was told that his “adopted son” Ikemefuna must die, he killed the boy himself in order to not appear weak and attached to a child. Okonkwo fell into depression shortly after. His depression was furthered when he returned to his village after seven years in exile and found that his people’s customs and laws had been replaced by the white men’s laws. In the end Okonkwo’s depression leads him to hang himself. One of the leading causes of mortality in the age group of 15-44 is self-inflected injuries including suicide. Currently self-inflicted injuries are the fourth leading cause of death in the developed world for this age group. It is further down the list for the developing world, but during the time period in which this book is set, self-inflicted injuries were more common since predominate diseases of today’s Africa, such as HIV/AIDS, did not exist.

The first time I read Things Fall Apart was in ninth grade, and when I began reading it again for this book report I was thinking, “I don’t remember this book having anything to do with bioengineering and world health.” Reading it over again I realize that the ailments that Okonkwo, his family, and his people suffer from are medical issues that we are still treating today.

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