Postcolonialism!

Clearly you can view Things Fall Apart through a postcolonial lens. The cultural studies packet we received clearly states, "postcolonial literature and its theorists investigate what happens when two cultures clash and when one of them, with its accessory ideology empowers and deems itself superior to the other." This theory is clearly portrayed within the book when the white Christian missionaries come and thrust their religion upon anyone willing to be subservient. In joining their church the members of the tribe had to accept that all of the social constructs that they had believed in where no longer true and that the only acceptable god was the one that the white people worshiped. Suddenly the spirits and the gods these people were accustom too held no value in this new religion. In fact these "heathens" where so frowned upon that converts must cut their ragged hair as a physical metaphor of their letting go of old traditions. But how these oppressive settlers treated these tribal members did not really matter because "many Westerners subscribed to the colonialist ideology that all races other than white were inferior or subhuman. These subhumans or 'savages' quickly became inferior and equally 'evil' Others."
With the above in mind that is what I will write about within my paper. You can see this book through a postcolonial lens because of the oppression of Christianity upon the tribal citizens thus making them appear savages. But upon viewing this objectively you can see that the "savages" actions were just. They believed that what they were doing by killing messengers and burning down churches would please their gods and the spirits they believed in; to cleanse their land and restore order to their tribe. The white missionaries mindset may be to call the tribal people "subhuman" but this is only because they do not understand the narratives or discourses in which these tribes live because they were brought up differently with different beliefs, morals, and ethics. This is the point I will work to address in my essay.