Monday, February 4, 2008
Things Fall Apart: Chapter 9
I believe this chapter is one of the richest when it comes to details about the beliefs of the tribe. Okonkwo's wife Ekwefi's daughter Ezinma has become very sick (this is not the first time). Okonkwo shows concern in the situation, by searching quite desperately to find a way to save her. Finally, he goes and visits a medicine man. This is when many of the beliefs of the locals are revealed. The medicine man believes it is an ogbanje that is hurting their daughter. An ogbanje is an "evil" child that keeps entering its mother's womb and keeps dieing to hurt the family emotionally. To try and destory the ogbanje, a medicine man actually mutilated the body of one of their previous children that had died. I found this quite disturbing, and very unnecessary for what they were trying to accomplish. A iyi-uwa is also mentioned, I guess it is the ogbanje's physical presence that they found on Ezinma. Again, this is just something about their beliefs that I can't really understand. To me, it's just like... why? I don't know, maybe it will be explained more later.
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2 comments:
I thought what the medicine man did to the dead child was completely out of line. I just about wanted to put down the book at that point.
I thought the whole idea of an "evil" child was kind of weird. I mean, who gets sick because of an evil child? If that's what they believe in then whatever.
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