Cultural Universals In Things Fall Apart

In every culture there are universals, these are the building blocks to the foundation of a society. Universals dictate how the people who live in the culture interact with one another. The novel Things Fall Apart is set in Umuofia, Africa (now a part of Nigeria) and makes observations on the cultural universals of the Igbo people. The cultural universals that the Igbo society lives by in the novel Things Fall Apart, are very different from the cultural universals of another african tribe Zulu. When compared some crucial universals that make up a society, such as rituals, supernatural beliefs and the way they treat men and women seem as if they couldn’t be more different.
Superstitions and rituals are just two of many beliefs that almost every …show more content…
Villagers often use these beliefs to explain things in their lives that they themselves cannot, although some of this fundamental ideas may be shared among villages they are often vairred. Natives of Umuofia believe that spirits are everywhere. They also believe that there are good and evil spirits. One aspect of life that the Igbo people believe is especially correlated to the spirit world is children and pregnancies. Igbo people believe that if a women keeps getting pregnant only to lose the child before it reaches infancy then she is being tormented by a evil spirit. The spirit will cause all of the children the mother has to fall ill and die. This cycle is only believed to stop once the evil spirits rock is dug up from the ground, allegedly once the rock is found and destroyed the mother will be able to have a healthy child (Achebe 77). The people of Zulu also believe that spirits play a large role in their lives. In Zulu when something bad happens such as a mother losing her child or if a new illness is being spread amongst the village it is considered to be the work of an evil or offended spirit. The only way that they believe the spirits will not cause such havoc is if they are properly worshiped, if this is done then the spirit will not affect the villagers lives (Zulu-Art & Life in Africa). In Umuofia is is a common belief that god's will interact with the everyday lives of …show more content…
The Igbo people have very specific gender roles, these roles limit what each gender is capable of doing within the village. The men in Umuofia do not see women as equals therefore they do not get the same responsibilities as men in the village. Igbo women have no authority when it comes to finances in their family, in fact it is so ludicrous to the villagers that they laugh at the thought of a woman being in charge of finances. The men also are to have complete control over their families at all time and is not seen as a real man if his wife and children do not obey his wishes (Achebe 53). To put it in simple terms women in Umuofia are forbidden to have any say in the family's financial situation and are not to question their husbands. However, this is not the case in Zulu. The gender roles in Zulu are essentially the opposite of the gender roles in. The woman in the family has complete control over the finances and makes all of the financial dissections without help from her husband. It is also expected that the woman be completely in charge of her family and that they will obey her (Zulu-Art & Life in Africa). There are many ways that the Umuofia and the Zulu tribes are similar, however, the gender roles within families is not. In pre-colonial Africa, agriculture was a huge part of the economy. A lot can be said about who was trusted with