Sin in Things Fall Apart

English Essay

Things Fall Apart

Sin

Mauricio Jaramillo

Thesis: Sin affects the social sphere of the Igbo society.

In Things Fall Apart, a novel that was written by Chinua Achebe, there is a lot of themes and in my opinion one of the most important themes is sin. Sin is a very important aspect or theme of the story, sin was one of the causes of a lot of deaths, exiles, and punishments in the story. In the story, sin was considered to be blaspheming or be against the gods or goddess they believed in. It´s important to talk about this theme because shows what believed in the people of the Igbo society, and how they acted against the acts that were considered to be sin.

In the Igbo society sin was considered to be any act that was against any god, even more if it was to one of the most important gods, sin was punished with exile, torture or even death. Unlike, crime is not considered to be a sin, like in our society, because crime is against other people, and it could happen in circumstance of need, but sometimes crimes could be punished with torture. Sin is a very important theme because most of the story is related to de events that occur for example when Okonkwo hits one of his wives in the fertile week of Peace, that´s considered to be sin against the earth goddess.

As sin was considered to be any act that is against any god, the punishments that the people had if they sin, were very severe, for example: death, exile and torture. All this punishments affected the social sphere of the Igbo society, why? Well first a lot of families could lose one important member of the family, and then the families will have to work harder for raising crops or whatever they need to raise the family. Finally people thought that if a person sin against any god the entire village will be punished, so if a man sin, they panicked because they had fear, because they thought that something wrong was going to happen to the village. “Take away your kola nut, I shall not eat in the...