Comparing Cultures in Things Fall Apart and Heart of Darkness :: comparison compare contrast essays

Clashing Cultures in Things surrender Apart and effect of Darkness A culture defines what its people perceive about monstrous, the place it gives to women, and its relationship with new(prenominal) cultures. The Ibo and European people in Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, have two distinct cultures that begin to blend when the white men come as missionaries and try to communicate and live together with the Africans. European culture also differs from native culture on the Congo rivers in Joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness. Only unrivaled man, Kurtz, really connects with the natives and then is taken away dying by his fellow Europeans. Evil is defined by its culture, whether it be how the culture accepts another culture and condemns as evil or identifying specific items as evil. In Things Fall Apart, the Ibo culture veiled the Africans as primitive natives who held their own different, seen as evil, ways and traditions. In Heart of Darkness, Marlow viewed the natives with whom Ku rtz is staying with as evil and feels their evil when he met them after traveling down the river. Once he heard that Kurtz ordered the natives to attack his ship, his views changed a little. Marlow experienced the evil that Kurtz did, and the even had the sickness that Kurtz died from. In both of these novels, specific places represent evil things in different cultures. Europeans treat a church as holy grounds but to the Ibo culture who didnt know Jesus, it was just a building raised by the white invaders who settled among them. Europeans found the Congo River and a town on its banks and it was thought of as evil because they hadnt experienced living there or vines covering them as they traveled along the river added to their thinking of an evil atmosphere. In Things Fall Apart, the kinship group refers to a forest as an evil forest and they cast everything they deem into it. For example, twins were thought of as a curse when born so they were cast into the forest and left to die. The evil forest didnt seem so evil to the European missionaries who came because they hadnt adopted this particular belief of evil into their culture. In fact, the clan purposely granted land in the evil forest to missionaries for their church, believing evil would destroy them, but the missionaries did last until the church was burnt down by members of the clan.