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Things Fall Apart Critical Lens Essay

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For many decades, books present us with different characters that impact the course of history and literature. These personas all come with different and unique perspectives that add meat to a story in unexpected ways. Usually the characters with the biggest impacts are the major characters of a story; however, as seen Antigone by Sophocles and Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, that concept may not always be the case. Both stories create a unique way of developing their plots: by utilizing their minor characters. The play and the book provide their minor characters, Obierika and Teiresias, impactful roles in the way they serve as the wise, reasonable, and sane personalities that hold the voice of reason in society. No matter how impossible a conflict …show more content…

Things Fall Apart depicts this when Obierika questions why the clan would make “a man suffer so grievously for an offence he had committed inadvertently?” (page 92). During all the rampage of the clans, keeping a sane mind able to think rationally seems entirely impossible. Still, Obierika serves as a light in the darkness that consumes everyone in Umuofia. In a culture led by the impulsiveness of men, a sane mind may come too far in between. Sometimes sane minds are nonexistent in family groups such as the one in Antigone. Teiresias becomes the only person capable of keeping their sanity by the end of the play. In the end, the blind prophet decides to let Creon “waste his fine anger upon younger men,” and let him “learn at last,” (Antigone sc. 5 Lines 877-888). The rational Teiresias choose to leave now and stay sane, rather than chatter with a blind fool. Wise men like Teiresias serve as the characters who are able to think clearly and logically at all times. The normal and sane minds that both minor character posses keep the major characters in the stories from completely destroying

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