monster&achebe

After reading Things Fall Apart, my first reaction was to immediately label the white missionaries as Achebe's "monster." After all, they came to the Ibo village uninvited, preaching that their ideas were right and averyone else was a sinner condemned to an eternity in hell. They imposed their point of view and their law system on a village when they had absolutely no business trying to change the Ibos' way of life. Ultimately, they caused the destruction of a very traditional society with their simple, narrow-minded ignorance and intolerance. Even the village, while they did not agree with the white man's ideas, grudgingly gave them a piece of land and would have let them live in peace if they had minded their own business. However, my original definition of "monster" was a creature who was misunderstood by society and chose to lash out at it, and this definition seems to fit Okonkwo better. Although he is accepted and even honored in his society, he has a difficult time making everyone around him understand his feelings, and this makes him even angrier and he lashes out as much as he can. Almost like Rousseau's idea that society made his innocent savage evil, the changing society that Okonkwo is faced with makes him uncontrollably violent.