1) Characters and setting of my problem. My problem is greed, so the characters would be those who have greed and those who are affected by greed. I want to cover governments and their officials, the current one in U.S. and any other current and past ones which I find I want to research/discuss more. I also want to discuss corporations that cause mass harm with their greed, like Procter & Gamble. I want to discuss the problems/issues that greed has caused, but only to a certain extent. I also want to figure out exactly what greed is, what it stems from, and how to curb it. So, then, my setting will be more of a philosophical one. I will show that greed causes problems, I will focus on the problems that I find particularly harmful, and then I will discuss the origins of greed and possible solutions to the problems it has caused. Sound good?
2) a) Achebe's monster could be aggression. Many of the undesirable things that happen in his story are caused by someones aggression: the aggression of Okonkwo causes him to be abusive to his family as well as leads to his own death (from his overeagerness for war); the aggressive tactics of the second priest lead to confrontations between his church and the clan; the aggressiveness of the District Commissioner and his superiors in his homeland lead to the destruction of the clan. I think, in all these cases, the cause for aggression is greed. In Okonkwo's case it is fear of being thought weak, a fear that stems from his desire, his greed, to be a lord of the clan. The priest is greedy in a weird spiritual way: greedy to gather followers and conquer those who will not follow. And the imperialism that causes the aggressiveness of the D.C. and his Queen is most certainly caused by greed: the desire to possess more, more gold, more slaves, more land, more trade, more converts. More, more, more.
b) Achebe's book describes a society that we could consider to be a precursor to our own. In a way, then, Achebe confirms Rousseau's picture of how society evolved: the clan Achebe describes is at a late stage of Rousseau's savage: when property, agriculture, love, war, and "title" are developed. However, I don't think that Achebe's book does much to confirm or dis confirm the earlier stages of Rousseau's savage. In fact, I don't really think that Achebe's book really matters in terms of confirming the accuracy of the savage in Rousseau's historical narrative. It does, however, serve as evidence that society does change over time, in fact, one society can take over another. This confirms a major point of Rousseau's work: that society changes not through divine will or natural law, but through human actions. Thus, if, perhaps, the characters of Achebe's book had acted differently than the path of their history could have been changed. But, maybe not. Maybe history really is a natural force that we have no control over. I prefer to think that we have control, and as such I can try to save the world. Really.