When reading Things Fall Apart I kept getting the feeling that people hardly ever talk about putting things back together again. It seems to me that things only continue to go to hell regardless of what people or characters do. Maybe thats how life is sometimes, but I like to think at least a little more optimistically. Okonkwo only seems to lose things and status and people from his family as the story trudges on. If he gained things would it defeat the point of the story?
Another interesting point I noticed was the "Evil Forest" idea. The Evil Forest in the beginning is a place of rituals and death and pestilence. It is an area of no return. Yet, the missionaries, when they arrive, are allowed to build their church on the ground of the evil forest. Its almost as if the more "primitive"...or "indigenous" religions are testing this new kid on the block or attempting to get rid of it. The villagers believe that the ground that the evil forest is on is evil and that the missionaries will die or they will not be able to last. However, they do last, and they are actually quite fine. In one fell swoop they have dispelled two central ideas to this native culture. It is one way of portraying the westernizing religion as a culturally destructive force in a different sense. Not that it tries to eradicate the old ways, although it does, but that it proves them and their central ideas wrong.
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