Things Fall Apart Part III

I've been waiting this whole book, anticipating the point when Things Fall Apart. I though that maybe it was when Okonkwo killed a man and was banished from his homeland, but no, things fell much much further apart. Okonkwo killed another guy (this time on purpose), realized that he has essentially doomed his village to the wrath of the white colonists, then kills himself out of shame. Damn. Achebe definitely wasn't subtle in his criticism of the colonization of Africa. I would go beyond calling it a criticism and just say it was a downright attack on both the act of colonization as well as the ideas that fueled it. Many of these colonists saw themselves as explorers going off into an uncivilized continent to bless the land with the gift of civilization. Achebe offers the under-represented point of view of the Africans who are having their land taken. In this light, the Europeans are not heroes, but instead n invasive species to be afraid of. Achebe definitely shows the worst side of colonization, but, objectively, there isn't a very positive side, and perhaps Achebe needed to be aggressive to get his point across.