Breaking Away

        Umuofia is a clan centered around spiritual and ancestral ceremonies. Throughout a week in the Umuofia clan, many ceremonies are performed. The Umuofia have ceremonies to celebrate marriage, death, harvest, planting, and burrials. These ceremonies are costly and performed with respect and fear of spirits. Okonkwo, though, begins to become skeptical of these ceremonies and traditions and does not understand why the innocent and accidents should be punished. He questions, “Why should a man suffer so grievously for an offense he had committed inadvertently?” (Achebe 125) Okonkwo had accidentally murdered a boy but was still exiled for seven years because of a rifle malfunction. Also, Okonkwo remembers when his wife had twins, and he had to take them to the mountains and murder them. He also questions why he had to murder his children and, “What crime had they committed?” (Achebe 125) Okonkwo is now starting to question the Earth Goddess but knows not to share his ideas and emotions for fear of rejection and failure.

        Okonkwo has also physically defied the gods by beating his wife during the Weak of Peace. His actions and mind are slowly forming their own sense of right and wrong, beliefs and ideas, and practices and routines. Okonkwo goes into deep thought, after being exiled from his village, about the rules of the Earth Goddess and her ceremonies and traditions. He is slowly breaking away from society and leaving his ideal, patriotic figure behind. Okonkwo has already began to break away from society mentally, in regards to his ideas and beliefs, and now physically, exiled from his village.

The Deep Unknown

The TED Talk “My Underwater Robot” by David Lang talks about deep-sea exploration with ROVs, remote operated vehicles. David Lang began his business in underwater robotics because of his curiosity of the unknown. He has created ROVs with inexpensive parts, but the ROVs can still produce live, clear video. He has not secluded the design for a profit but has freely posted all of his codes and parts online for others to give feedback on and improve his designs. David Lang is a prime example of someone who doesn’t care about money or fame, but wants to further the human understanding of the unknown. He is spreading the ideas of deep-sea exploration using ROVs and is gathering a following all around the world containing curious explorers who collectively want to improve the future and understanding of our world. He created a Kickstarter to raise money for shipping kits explaining how to make ROVs. David Lang has received many videos and photos from people sending images seen by the ROVs. ROVs are becoming more common in exploration to search and retrieve samples from extreme places in which humans could not survive. If people work together as a scientific community and not for personal profit, we could fully understand our world and all of its surfaces and minerals in a matter of years. ROVs act as an extension to the human eye by seeing and recording sights and phenomena we could not possibly see. Hopefully ROVs will soon be cheaply created to explore the outer reaches of our solar system and, eventually, our galaxy.