Today in my English 212 class we had a guest speaker in to talk about heroism in the novel Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe. Perhaps you've read it.

The setting is Africa, and it was written in the 1950s. The main character, Okonkwo, is a man who grew up with a failure for a father, a compassionate a musical man, who borrowed money and died before he paid it back, known for his laziness. Okonkwo, then, hates the thought of being weak, feminine, or lazy, and becomes a powerful man in his community. A woman from their tribe gets killed by another tribe, and so they decide to take a woman as a replacement, and a boy. Ononkwo takes care of the boy while the oracles decide what will happen to him. Three years later, the oracles decide to kill the boy. Blood for blood. An elder in the community tells Ononkwo not to take part in the killing, because the boy thinks of him as a father (as it had been three years), and Ononkwo thought of him as a son. He goes along on the journey out of the village, but keeps his distance from the boy. When the time comes, they strike the boy with a machete, wound him, and he runs toward Ononkwo, crying "Father! Help me!" In a daze, Ononkwo strikes the final, killing blow.

This is not the end of the story, but this is what the focus was on today. The guest speaker argued that Ononkwo was a hero, even though he made this mistake. In fact, the failure is what causes his death (his suicide) in the end. When at first the speaker said "it was just a small mistake" I was taken aback. A mistake? The killing of practically his own son? But then he said to think about the culture. Put yourself into that culture. It was organized by the oracles. The boy was going to be killed, as this was a cultural norm. After all, the other tribe killed a woman. And, Ononkwo was so concerned with being weak, he could not stop the blow -- if he ran, or comforted the boy, what good would it do, when the boy was going to die?

"I can't accept that." A girl, white, in the class interrupted. "I can't call him a hero. To me, a hero is someone who changes things for the better. If he was a real hero, he would have stood up for his son and told them that they couldn't kill him."

Prof: "But that was their culture. You have to put yourself into that culture."

"Well, he should have changed it to be a hero. That culture is wrong -- it needs to be changed."

How very white of her to say that. It's not the way we do things here, in our Christian land, (though criminals don't get forgiven, and abortions are legal) they must change to be like us, because we have got it right!

Who had the right to tell anyone else that the way they are living their life is wrong? I'm not saying that I believe "a life for a life" is right. But, later in the story, missionaries come, and when a member of the tribe does not adhere to the conversion he gets hanged.

Huh.