posted
Hello, Hatrack. I'm new here! (Not really, but anyways...) Getting to the point, when we do "peer editing" in class, I get useless garbage...one person wrote that saying both "stratosphere" and "stratified" is a redundancy...so, if you don't mind, I would appreciate some REAL editing, from people who are much more my peers than people in my English class. Feel free to rip this to shreds. Thanks love you byebye!
<><><><><><><><> REVOLUTIONS
Two thousand people were unceremoniously dumped off a barge and drowned. Tens of thousands were sent to their deaths by kangaroo courts. Peasant insurrections obliterated all sense of order in a rampage of looting and pillaging. What do the preceding three historical events have in common? They were all repugnant, unfortunate, and necessary. In 1789, grave social disparities and backward governmental systems stopped pleading for reform and began devouring the French Bourbon monarchy alive. While much was lost in this violent reforming initiative, an effective form of government was introduced to Europe. In the 1789 French Revolution, contemporary methods of conducting society were overrun by more efficient ones. A similar cataclysm takes place in Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. While much suffering accompanies the Nigerian Ibo culture’s annihilation, grave fallacies within Ibo society demand such chaos. A fatally stratified society, a mortally warped sense of communal responsibility, and terminally rampant self-delusion leave the Ibo ravenous for reform. The incoming European missionaries and imperialists eagerly pounce on the faltering Ibo civilization.
In Things Fall Apart, the Ibo culture has a fatally stratified society. The pinnacle of Umofian citizenship is attainment of all four available titles. Whoever accomplishes this feat becomes a ruler of Umofia. This governmental system is a mortal blemish on Ibo culture, because it incorrectly equates social status with management skills. The super-ambitious Okonkwo endeavors to rule Umofia by acquiring all four titles. Okonkwo’s father was an underachiever, and as a result, “Okonkwo was possessed by fear of his father’s shameful death.” Possession by any type of spirit is not associated with multi-tasking. When one is possessed by an ambition, he works towards this ambition to the neglect of all else. The possessed Okonkwo is notorious throughout his tribe for physically and verbally abusing family members. Moreover, he is infamous for his scorn of those less successful than himself. An Umofian elder is so struck by Okonkwo’s disdainful manner that he comments “Okonkwo knows how to kill a man’s spirit.” (26) This remark strongly implies that Okonkwo will snatch at power even at the expense of others. Okonkwo, in his aristocratic frenzy, deliberately demoralizes fellow tribesmen simply so he may rule. For this reason, Okonkwo is enraged when the European Reverend Brown establishes schools and promises rapid social ascension for all attendees. The Reverend also assures students that they will dominate those who do not attend his school. Reverend Brown has just tore the aristocratic Ibo ruling system apart, replacing it with a more logical government based on abilities. Okonkwo, realizing that his life’s work has just been annihilated, lashes out by killing a European diplomat before committing suicide. Okonkwo and his ruthless ambition perfectly represent the incurably stratified Ibo society. It is no surprise that Okonkwo’s plummet towards disgrace parallels Umofia’s fall.
The Ibo culture has a hopelessly convoluted definition of individual success. By adhering to this definition, Okonkwo virtually invites failure into his life. Ibo society has an equally warped philosophy towards communal responsibility. The Ibo believe that one person’s wrongdoing may spell disaster for the entire tribe. When Okonkwo beats his wife during the Week of Peace, he is sharply rebuked by Umofian elders. “The earth goddess whom you have insulted may refuse us, and we shall perish.” This bewildering comment implies that an isolated act of domestic violence may lead to widespread famine. While domestic violence should be condemned, it is completely unconnected to agricultural success. The horrendous logic used in linking these ideas reveals a cancer buried deep within the Ibo psyche: an unyielding requirement of homogeneity. Anyone who does anything unusual, whether by ill-timed domestic violence or birthing of twins, is ostracized. When the Europeans arrive, they eagerly harvest all useful societal elements that Umofia has discarded for quirky reasons. For Okonkwo’s neglected son Nwoye, “Christianity answered a question that haunted his young soul-the question of discarded twins crying in a bush.” Nwoye is among the many mortified with his culture’s abhorrence of twins and insistence on homogeneity. Nwoye, and others like him, abandon Ibo culture for the all encompassing Christian philosophy. The Ibo culture violently ejects all irregularities from its culture, claiming that all must be identical. On the other side of this lethal coin, the Ibo often maintain that a group’s representative is a carbon copy of that group. This is Umofian elders’ subconscious rationale for sending the commanding Okonkwo as a diplomat. By dispatching Okonkwo, the Umofians masquerade as a more powerful tribe than they actually are. Umofia does not glorify foreign emissaries in this manner. When the first missionary comes in contact with Ibo culture, he is mocked for his strange mannerisms and murdered. Outrageously, the Umofians utilize a similar method when confronted with a thriving Christian community. The mock the Christians and their strange ideas, first by “granting” them land in the Forest of Death and then by exiling all of their Christian converts. When they have sufficiently defiled the Christian religion, they realize a new level of malice in razing a church. Vicious intertribal and cultural antagonisms ensue, and the Ibo culture disintegrates. By demanding and expecting rigid conformity, the Ibo culture arranges for its own apocalypse.
Umofian society’s fall from grace is due largely to an overemphasis on class structure and an unyielding insistence on sameness. The Ibo are also struck down as a result of widespread self-delusions. Subconscious trickery is endemic during the Umofian communal ceremony. “Those who noticed Okonkwo’s step in a masked spirit kept quiet.” Umofia knows that the Nine Spirits have not abruptly materialized in the town square. Nevertheless, it does not confront the painfully obvious. While this religious make-believe seems relatively harmless, it is merely the tip of the ideological iceberg. The attitude of all Ibo contains violently clashing ideas. It is impossible for a distinct social hierarchy and a sense of communal responsibility to exist simultaneously. The social hierarchy provides incentive to horde titles. However, titles exist solely as a means of differentiation. As the elders prepare to execute Okonkwo’s son, the powerful sage Ezeudu offers Okonkwo advice. “That boy calls you father. Bear no hand in his death.” Ezeudu carries tremendous influence within the tribe, and knows that this execution is immoral. Therefore, he requests that Okonkwo be absent from the killing. However, he lacks the gumption to take the next step. Instead of using his reforming capacity to block the execution, Ezeudu attempts to avoid conflict with the uncreative elders. By forsaking morality in a vain attempt to placate Umofian minds, Ezeudu murders an innocent child. Ezeudu’s grand titles are thoroughly useless because communal responsibility discourages him from using them. Titled men must somewhat ignore communal responsibility to vindicate their stratified society. This ideological inconsistency blows the Ibo philosophy up in smoke. While most are too power-hungry or paralyzed by society to notice, many Umofian nobles recognize the Ibo culture’s collapse. A delusional populace, above all else, causes the upper crust to convert to Christianity. Their conversions transform the church from a laughingstock facility for societal rejects into a viable alternative. The conversions of the upper classes serve as the finishing blow to Ibo culture. With two core philosophies pulling the Ibo in opposite directions, their culture is predictably shredded by European ideals.
Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart portrays Ibo victimization at the hands of the Europeans. While the Westerners’ actions are deplorable, Ibo culture’s fantastic self-glorification, overblown class divisions and demented views of partnership leave it prone for conquest. It is worth noting that the villains of this tale also required significant reform. The hallucinatory British Parliament justified its ethnocentric power grab through unspecific ramblings about “white man’s burden.” Furthermore, Great Britain leaned too heavily on imports and had an insanely unbalanced system of representation. As in the French Revolution, internal problems stalked and eventually subdued the British Empire, knocking it cleanly out of the international limelight. Bourbon France, the United Kingdom, and the Ibo culture all veiled fundamental flaws with much pretension. When the societies were overtaken by their faults, they went down crackling. The crumbling of all three cultures illustrates that while nations may run from internal fallacies, they can neither hide from them nor escape them.
posted
you may want to insert extra line breaks between paragraphs so it's easier to read. I'll try to drop at least a few comments later.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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I'd cut the first few sentences and explain this point more clearly: "In 1789, grave social disparities and backward governmental systems stopped pleading for reform and began devouring the French Bourbon monarchy alive."
I'm not exactly sure what this means, but I think that if you took time to explain the French government systems and their relation to the social disparities a little more thoroughly instead of merely qualifiing them as grave and backward, I could get my head around your paper a little easier. Before you use ethically value laden language like "backward" and "grave" you should probably describe how the government systems and social structure may be considered poor. If you spend an entire paragraph on these points, when you map the precursors to the French revolution onto the Ibo, your comparisons will be clearer and more convincing
The individuals involved are either fictional or dead, so I think you can take the urgency out of your tone, and just try to explain to us what happened and why.
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