Chinua Achebe, the author of Things Fall Apart, did a great job of describing the lifestyle of an African tribe in his book. It was smart to address almost every aspect of the tribal life in the story because it allowed the people that did not know of the life to understand the book and why things happened the way they did. He meant for his main audience to be the American public and the book has done very well because it is a great book and almost anyone that reads the book can identify with it. Some of the reasons I think Things Fall Apart is a great book are the ending of the book, the description of the tribal customs, and the Okonkwo character.
The customs of the Umuofia tribe are described very well in the book. While reading, you learn everything about the tribe that you need to know and everything that you don't need to know. In the book Achebe writes about everything from Umuofian wedding rituals to what the people in the tribe do when they are over run with locusts. Without knowing a lot of the things that Achebe wrote about in this book it would have been hard for the reader to understand why some of the main characters did a lot of the things they did. Another reason for writing about the customs of the tribes in the book was because it was coming from an inside point of view. All of the other novels in America at that time that were written about Africa were from an outside point of view and this was Achebe chance to show the readers how life really is amongst the tribes in Africa during that time.
The character of Okonkwo also helps make the story strong because he is a very identifiable person. Maybe not to his extreme, but most people are afraid of failing in life and live their life in a way that failure is the worst thing that can happen. Okonkwo felt, as do many people, that he had to be the richest and the most famous tribesman that lived in the tribe.
