Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe is a story about personal beliefs and customs, and also a story about conflict. There is a struggle between the Igbo family, culture and religion, all caused by a difference in the personal beliefs and customs of the Igbo and the English. There are also strong opinions about the main character, Okonkwo. We are then introduced to the sights of his village, Umuofia. We see how things fall apart when these beliefs and customs are compared to those of white missionaries. The author's full name is Albert Chinualumogu Achebe also known as Chinua, he was born on November 16, 1930 in Ogidi, Nigeria. It is a product of both native and European culture. This has a great effect on the telling of the story. He attended Government College, Umuahia from 1944 to 1947 and University College, Ibadan from 1948 to 1953. He then obtained a degree from the University of London in 1953 and studied broadcasting at the British Broadcasting Corp. in London in 1956 He joined the Ministry of Biafran Information and represented Biafra as a diplomat. Since then, he has taught variously at universities in Nigeria, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. Achebe wrote Things Fall Apart partly in response to what he saw as inaccurate characterizations of Africa and Africans by British authors. The book was published in 1958, he was 28 years old at the time. It was very successful and has sold over 2,000,000 copies and has been translated into thirty languages. In his life he wrote a total of fifteen different books. He became a political activist in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Thirty years ago Chinua Achebe was one of the founders of this new literary style and over the years many critics have come to consider him the best of Nigerian novelists. His successes, however, were not limited to his continent. He is considered by many to be one of the best novelists currently writing in the English language. In recent decades he has held a variety of teaching positions, most notably a professorship at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. In Thing Fall Apart, we see a conflict early in the story between Okonkwo and his father, Unoka. "Okonkwo was governed by one passion: to hate everything his father Unoka had loved. One of those things was kindness and... middle of paper... they had let the other messenger escape. They had broken in the turmoil instead of in action” (Achebe 205). Everything he lived for and believed in would be taken away from him by white men. They had control over everything. He didn't want this to happen, so he took his own life. However, this is ironic because by doing so, he was committing an act considered one of the worst actions a member could perform in Ibo society. Throughout the story we see how strong Okonkwo's personal beliefs were and how much they meant to him. Beliefs, both personal and of the society into which a person is born, play an important role in his life. This story is an example of what happens when those beliefs are taken away and others are forced on a person. Everyone needs to believe in something, and things fall apart when that's no longer possible. When he tells the story with understanding and personal experiences in both cultures. It does not describe African culture and their beliefs as barbaric. It simply tells things as they are and how things happened. It's the same with white men. Chinua Achebe realized that neither culture was bad, but they simply had a difference in beliefs.