Community Changes Lives

The idea of one fighting against a community to stand up for traditions and what he believes is right is promenately shown in Chinua Achebe’s novel, Things Fall Apart. The main character, Okonkwo, is praised and honored during the beginning of the novel but ends up killing himself to show his community that he would rather die than have his morals, beliefs, and traditions ripped away by the foreigners’ religion. His morals and beliefs included his desires to keep his traditions and hold a sense of community. The ideas Okonkwo died for resonate with me in a way only a few books have. It has made a serious impact in on my actions and my decisions to help others in my community.

Before reading this novel, I would help out my community whenever I could if the opportunity presented itself. Just like for service learning, I would never have gone out of my way to help younger students receive a better education, but because of Service Learning, I had the opportunity to help my community by doing something that is always exciting and self-rewarding. In regards to Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo’s sense of leading and being part of his community drove him protect the traditions of the community instead of changing with his community. Okonkwo’s ideas have always been with him no matter what ever since he was born. The true desire and obligation to help the community no matter the cost was the impulse Okonkwo was born with. Unfortunately, I was not born like that, but I have discovered a likeness for serving others and priding myself on being a part of my community.

This strong sense of community that I have recently discovered has given me a joy that brings a smile not only on my face but also on the faes of others. After reading Things Fall Apart, my obligation to help others and improve my community has grown exponentially bigger. I have noticed myself helping classmates more and more when they need help and helping my neighbors in any little task to make their lives easier. Okonkwo strives to find any major task to help the Ibo people thrive. “Okonkwo represents the Umuofia’s sense of community and is full with pride and confidence” (Things Fall Apart essay 2). Okonkwo’s pride in his community impacts my life enough for me to completely change my thoughts every day and instead of focusing on my own struggles and successes, I focus on the mistakes of others and trying to improve their lives.

Finding a Community

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s popular Russian novel, Notes From Underground, is a perplexing story about one man who is trying to fit in to a community and figure out who he is. The Underground Man is in a constant struggle to find others like him and fit in to a community. He has no one like him because his community has died out years ago. The Underground Man, “has suffered all his life and has only recently begun to accept and enjoy the pain of suffering” (“Pain is Fun” Blog Post). The only community that the Underground Man believes himeslf to be a part of is the community of pain and suffering. Personally, I have not experienced what he is going through and have always felt like I am part of a community no matter how large or small. Although, I am empathetic towards the Underground Man’s feelings of having a community you are a part of slowly corrode away and dissapear leaving you having to find another community or try to reform the old community. I had to find another community to become a part of, whereas the Underground Man decided to try and revive an old community which was dying more and more every day no matter how hard the Underground Man worked to bring it back.

Before reading Notes From Underground, I had the preconceived idea that all people belonged in a community and loved their community. I had this idea because I had always had good friends and loved the people around me. Only after reading this novel did I realize that some people struggle in finding others with similar thoughts and habits in a solid community. The Underground Man is one of the people that tries and can’t fit into a community and uses every excuse, including pain, to create and join a community because his community has died years before. This novel has changed my perspective about people who struggle to find others with similar ideas.

In my life, I treat people who having a bad day or who are sitting alone differently than I used to, and now I try and help them by introducing them to my community. Dostoevsky has created an idea in my mind of how some can try and try to find a community and never find one without the consistant and supportive help from others in another community.

Teasing the Tiger

        In Lahiri’s novel, The Namesake, Gogol finds himself with a situation that keeps getting worse and worse. Before chapter eight, Gogol is happily dating and in love with Maxine. They date for a while and are constantly together until Gogol’s happiness is ripped away from him in one sudden phone call. Gogol is told that his father has died from a heart attack. Ashima, Gogol, and Sonia all meet together at home to grieve the loss of their loved-one. As Gogol is grieving he is doing the opposite of what he was doing when he was happy. He is now pushing away Maxine and not allowing her to grieve with him and bringing his family closer by visiting Maxine less often and his family more often. Because of this, Maxine breaks up Gogol, and Gogol is now even more depressed because he lost his love and his loved-one. Once he and his family have finished grieving, he meets a Bengali girl who he remembers from his childhood. They soon begin to date and then become engaged.

  Lahiri tortures Gogol by giving him a normal, joyful childhood until he became a teenager. At that point, Lahiri introduces Gogol to the truth about his name and the tragidies behind it. Gogol is then in constant shyness and embarrassment about his name and its roots. This pain lasts for a while until he’s eighteen when he changes his name to Nikhil. As Nikhil, Gogol studies hard, becomes an architect, and finds his love, Maxine. Gogol’s years of blissful joy with Maxine last for a while until his father dies, and he is sadness and depression again. Lahiri is brutal and cruel to Gogol by giving him a joyful childhood, followed by the pain and shame of his own name, followed by pleasure of freedom of his name and his parents in college, and sadness again due to the death of his father and break up with Maxine. Like all people, Gogol has his ups and downs in life but for Gogol, his ups and downs are extreme enough to look like Lahiri is giving Gogol a taste of happiness and freedom and when Gogol wants a little more, she rips it away. With Gogol’s recent engagement and happiness, I predict something horribly wrong to occur to hurt his new love and his family.

The Name Change

            In Lahiri’s novel, The Namesake, Gogol is still trying to fight his name in chapter five and six and find out the reasons why his parents named him Gogol. After living with the name Gogol for about 18 years of his life, Gogol finally convinces his parents to allow him to change his named offically to Nikhil. As he enters college at Yale, he is determined to known as Nikhil and leave Gogol behind forever. He makes sure all of his offical papers that go to Yale say that his name is Nikhil and all of his classmates know him as Nikhil.

After college, Gogol moves to New York to work as an architect and begins to date a girl named Maxine who he falls in love with. He is at her house all the time when he’s not a work and she calls him by his new name Nikhil because she is in his new life. But, when Gogol decides to visit his parents with Maxine for lunch on his way to Maxine’s grandparents’ house, Ashoke calls Gogol “Gogol” instead of “Nikhil”. This mistake angers Gogol but he doesn’t show it and avoids the topic. When Maxine comments on it on the ride to the grandparents’ house, he changes the topic and avoids talking about his old name and avoids telling her that he changed his name from “Gogol” to “Nikhil”. She drops it quickly.

I find Lahiri’s style of writing interesting in regards to chapters five and six because even though she writes that Gogol changed his name, she still refers to him as Gogol when she is narrating his life. Even though Gogol has officially changed his name to Nikhil, Lahiri refers to him as Gogol. Reading this shows me that Lahiri will always remember him as Gogol and that the name Nikhil will not stick in Gogol’s life. I sense that when she refers to him as Gogol instead of Nikhil, she is foreshadowing him changing his name back to Gogol and liking Gogol more than Nikhil.

The Namesake Perspective

          The Namesake is written by Jhumpa Lahiri and is set in 1968. An Indian family consisting of a husband and wife, Ashoke Ganguli and Ashima Ganguli, are soon going to have a child and are struggling through pregnancy and labor. The interesting writing style caught my eye when I noticed that Lahiri wrote the entire first two chapters (and most likely the whole novel) in third person. Ashoke, Ashima and even their baby, Gogol, are refered to by their names from an outside perspective of the situation. This point of view doesn’t allow the reader to become emotionally attached to anyone of the characters as easily as a first person perspective would.

          On the other hand, Lahiri writes in a way that allows the reader to understand the strife and emotions of the main characters while still seeing them and reading them in the third person point of view. The way Lahiri shows me the conscience and emotions of Ashoke and Ashima, yet still allows me to watch the events in the novel unfold with no character’s bias, blows my mind. I can’t even describe how the writing gives me a feeling that I’m watching the novel as an invisible spectator, but still gives me a feeling that I can feel and think along with the characters. Lahiri’s writing has given me a mixture of third and first person perspective seemlessly.

Pain Is Fun

            The Underground Man in Dostoevsky’s popular novel, Notes from Underground, derives enjoyment and pleasure from self-inflicted emotional suffering and causing emotional suffering in others. He has suffered all his life and has only recently begun to accept and enjoy the pain of suffering. He regrets not causing others to suffer with him when he was a young man, and now gains pure joy when he causes misery in others. He wants his readers to understand his love of human agony by giving a history lesson about how, “It is said that Cleopatra (pardon the example from Roman history) was fond of sticking gold pins into her slave-girls’ breasts and derived enjoyment from their screams and writhing” (Dostoevsky 22). The Underground Man uses historical examples, even rumors which may or may not be true, of ancient leaders to illustrate his point that suffering is enjoyable even to a demi-god. Though the rumor of Cleopatra may or may not be true, he is convinced that he is not abnormal and that suffering is pleasured by many.

            The Underground Man also believes himself powerless, indecisive  and weak when he commands, “Destroy my desires, eradicate my ideals, show me something better, and I will follow you” (Dostoevsky 34). The Underground Man desires to be hurt and wants to suffer through the destruction of the meaning of life itself for the joy of being killed, mentally, slowly. He causes self-inflicted pain to his own mind and to the minds of all around him for his own personal, twisted enjoyment.

Kayhon Rabbani
Mrs. Hawkins
English II (Block C)
29 January 2014

The Lions Get a Voice

Chinua Achebe and Rick Zand shatter the idea that their respective single stories are the whole truth and strive to show the entire story of Africans and Iranians through examples that show how many Africans and Iranians act contrary to the single story. Achebe uses Okonkwo and the Ibo people in his famous novel, Things Fall Apart, to show how Africans are not just wild, savage, uneducated people by not only showing the missed truths but also showing how the single story is true, just not complete. Zand also breaks the single story of Iranians by exposing the true nature and beauty of Iranians that hidden under the single story. Achebe and Zand’s approach to completing the single story is to unmask the truth by giving solid examples of how Africans and Iranians can be different than their single stories.

In Achebe’s popular novel, Things Fall Apart, set in Nigeria, Africa, Achebe uses the Ibo people, a large civilization of people in differing clans living in Nigeria, to demonstrate the truth of the single story by portraying how the hunters were not wrong just incomplete. The Ibo people are loyal, deticated, hard working, intellegent people who have a high sense of hierarchy and the skills and knowledge to survive and thrive in their environment. The Ibo’s sense of community causes fear in other clans who know not to go to war with the Umuofia due to their power and unity (Achebe 12). Okonkwo, the main character and a member of the Ibo people, who Achebe uses to portray the truth of the single story, shows himself to the world as a strict, violent, aggressive man who beats his wives and children regularly and doesn’t listen to the rules of the Umuofia, his clan, or the gods. Okonkwo represents the Umuofia’s sense of community and is full with pride and confidence. Community, pride, and confidence are the opposite of the single story, but they are a big part of the Ibo culture. Not only is community a big part of the Ibo culture, but so is a sense of order and hierarchy. In the Umuofia clan, “The elders and grandees of the village sat on their own stools brought there by their young sons and slaves. Okonkwo was among them. All others stood except those who came early enough to secure places on the few stands which had been built by placing smooth logs on forked pillars” (Achebe 46). The hierarchy favors the old, wise, and powerful, which includes Okonkwo, who proves the single story true through violence and bluntness but also showing that he is part of the Ibo people who show the complete story of Africa. Achebe completes the story of Africa by promoting the single story as true but, at the same time, adding the whole story along with the single story to provide a full view of African life and culture.

In Rick Zand’s “Breaking the Stereotypes of Persia and Iran” article on the PBS FrontLine website, he breaks the lasting idea of Iranians being cruel, unequal to women and terrorists by revealing the mask of the single story, revealing the whole truth of the Iranian people. Zand discusses how people relate the name Persian to the old, proud, elegant ancient empire and Iranian to the scary, dangerous, evil nation in the Middle East. The Persian Empire was beaten and was pushed down into the Middle East where the Persians created their own nation where they were called Iranians. Persians evolved into Iranians through time, but others look at these two civilizations completely differently. Zand uses the West’s perspective to define the perspective of Iran when he talks about how, “The two names define very different identities according to the western perspective. The study of Persia as an Oriental culture is drawn from aesthetics and the exotic… Iran, by contrast, has become demonized by a Western media and polity through the use of epithets…” ("Breaking the Stereotypes of Persia and Iran." PBS. PBS, n.d. Web.). Also, Zand discusses how Iran is painted as dangerous while Iran is a bustling place filled with workers and businessmen who want to live calm, enjoyable lives like all humans. But the single story shows that, “In the Western perspective, Persia can be subdued, painted, written about, romanticized, and dominated. Iran is perceived simply as hostile” ("Breaking the Stereotypes of Persia and Iran." PBS. PBS, n.d. Web.). Zand strives to reveal the true nature of Iranians, not just the carefree danger of some. He tries to give the lions a voice, not just the hunters with guns.

Achebe and Zand both strive to show the world the full story of their people and break the single story holding back their peoples. The single story of Africans and Iranians both cover up and hide the truth about the real complexity, unity, and kindness of Iranians and Africans. Both Achebe and Zand break the single story by showing concrete examples of many exceptions of the single story, thus proving that the single story is an incomplete story of the truth of Africans and Iranians. Achebe’s quote from Things Fall Apart, “But there was a yound lad who had been captivated, His name was Nwoye, Okonkwo’s first son. It was not the mad logic of the Trinity that captivated him. He did not understand it…. Nwoye’s callow mind was greatly puzzled,” reflects the ideas that Zand is trying to convey about Iranians and how they are complex, interesting, and faithful people, like the Ibo people. Achebe uses Nwoye to go against the single story of Africa because of his deep belief in faith, thrust, and discovery. Achebe and Zand give Africans and Iranians a voice to speak against the world and tell all their true selves and their own stories.

The single story of Africa and Iran is not only promoted by Chinua Achebe and Rick Zand but also broken. Achebe and Zand attempt to show the world the complete story of Africa and Iran by promoting the single stories as true but also by showing that each people have hundreds of stories comprised to make the complete story of a people. The single story of any people is only told from the victors’ standpoint. The story is only complete when hear the voices of the victors and the defeated.

I think you did really well on your essay! I just wished you used more quotes from your additional text and really delved into the stereotypes the others impose on the people so you could counteract them… also maybe trying to converge the paragraphs because you are writing a comparison essay on it.. overall great job!

Bibliography:

Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. New York: Anchor, 1994. Print.

Zand, Rick. "Breaking the Stereotypes of Persia and Iran." PBS. PBS, 12 Mar. 2010. Web. 06 Feb. 2014.