Things Fall Apart: Part 2

Upon completion of the story, I found myself rather infuriated at the arrogance of the Christian missionaries. They took the Igbo people as primitive merely because their culture was different and they weren't literate. It's interesting to be able to compare and contrast the missionaries and the Igbo people. The missionaries were constantly plotting and planning, using their words to convert people and create problems. Whereas the Igbo people were honest, consistently trying to hold onto their culture and traditions without creating a war. They used few words to convey their positions. If we accredit these differences entirely to orality versus literacy, it's pretty clear that orality does have some advantages over literacy, and vice versa.

It becomes very clear, particularly in the last half of the book, that Okonkwo values violence above all else, because it is the very definition of a real man. It is evident in the lack of respect he has for his mother's village because they do not attack the missionaries. It is evident in the anger he feels towards his own village when they too, do not pursue the missionaries and kill them all after he slays one of them. And it is especially evident in his death. He violently hanged himself, committing suicide, rather than going to court and being hanged by the white men.

The biggest turning point in the story, where Okonkwo accidentally kills a clansman, is also one of the easiest parts to skip over: "Guns fired the last salute and the cannon rent the sky. And then from the centre of the delirious fury came a cry of agony and shouts of horror. It was as if a spell had been cast. All was silent. In the centre of the crowd a boy lay in a pool of blood. It was the dead man's sixteen-year-old son, who with his brothers and half-brothers had been dancing the traditional farewell to their father. Okonkwo's gun had exploded and a piece of iron had pierced the boy's heart." It starts with the death and ends with Okonkwo's blame. Half a paragraph at most. I found it curious that such an important moment in the story was told with such brevity. Immediately after that, Okonkwo and his family leave the village and life is forever different. I nearly skimmed over it, because I was so enamored in the story. I had to read it twice before the idea really settled in. Okonkwo had to leave because he accidentally murdered a clansman, and lost everything, even though there was no intention behind it. I found that unfair, but I appreciated the understanding of everyone in the village, that everyone just knew that it had to happen that way, but that no one felt good about it. The complete understanding of this culture is mind boggling. There is no need for a king, because they all work together, they all understand the importance of obeying the gods and following the rules. No one quarrels with the rules. No one searches for loopholes, they just obey and are respected.

Things Fall Apart: Part 1

I found myself deeply interested in the story that Achebe is telling here. The difference in culture is the greatest draw for me, because I am completely relying on the words within the story to formulate an image in my mind of what is happening. I agree with some others in the class, however, that it is difficult to keep the names of the characters sorted correctly when I am unsure of how to pronounce them in the first place. Although I greatly appreciate that names have so much importance, and that each character's name means something that was either defined by their life, or will define their life. Many of my friends have their names merely because their parents just liked the way it sounds, and not because it has any sort of important meaning.

As I read, I tried to keep the concepts from Orality and Literacy in the back of my mind, and recognize them when I came across them in Achebe. The Ibo (or Igbo) culture that Achebe writes about greatly values language and orality. Achebe writes, "among the Ibo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten" (p6). As we read, we learn that this culture highly values proverbs as a way to dictate life, and use story telling/narrative as a primary method of communicating life lessons. Parents don't just tell their children not to do things because they are bad, they tell stories about animals or insects who have done these things and what happened to them. At several points in the story, women are mentioned telling stories to their children around a fire, and children even telling stories to other children.

In America, we sit around on our couch or next to our children's beds and read them stories from books. Oral stories are passed down generation to generation, each person learning the stories so that they might share the same lessons with their children. Although we occasionally pass down the books that our parents read to us to our own children, with such a high frequency of new stories being written, it is unnecessary to pass down stories in order for our children to learn the same lessons that we learned as kids. I found it particularly interesting that in oral cultures, stories are a necessity to life. Narrative matters. Whereas in American culture (at least in regard to my own family), stories are told for entertainment value more than anything else.

Because of Orality and Literacy, I was looking for interesting aspects of the narrative that I could analyze as a development of literacy. The way in which Achebe tells his story makes for a lack of building action to climax, but it does give a lot of background information. Each chapter begins in the past, with a separate event, and then as the story gets filled in, it slowly connects to the present in which the story is being told. Little by little, a lot of information is gleaned about Okonkwo and why the present story matters. It is an interesting way to tell a story, and I noticed that many of my favorite books are told that way. For example, I am presently re-reading Alison Bechdel's "Fun Home," which is a graphic memoir, and each chapter beings in a similar fashion.

Orality and Literacy: Part 2

In chapter 6, Ong starts to talk about how literacy has shifted the way we express narratives, not just in that we write down narratives instead of strictly speaking them, but in the most basic format we use to describe narratives: The plot.

He talked about how unusual it is that we document things linearly, typically in a chronological fashion. To me, that seems like the best way to do it. I thought it was interesting how Ong keeps pointing us back to the roots of our literacy: orality. In oral cultures, you say things as you remember them. Sometimes orderly, other times not. Often you start in the middle and explain as you go.

Ong mentions "Freytag's pyramid" (p 139) as the most basic way that we conceptualize a plot. I was taught about Freytag's pyramid in middle school. You use it to analyze a story, break it down into its parts, and learn how to tell your own story. I remember sitting down in high school with a drawn out pyramid (building, climax, falling), and trying to write a story that includes all of the elements needed to fulfill the pyramid. The other day, I tried to tell a made up story just off the cuff, without writing any part of it down. I didn't get very far before giving up.

In our culture, narrative without a written plot is relatively non-existent. Everyone writes things down. Especially if you are telling some sort of story, conveying a message, or sharing knowledge. I find myself often taking notes when I am having casual conversations with friends, because I do not want to forget what they say. A reliance on writing may be the downfall of all memory. Because we are really not required to remember anything beyond the scope of a few moments, how long do literate cultures have until our long term memories fade completely?

One of the most memorable things that Ong mentioned was this idea that "you do not find climactic linear plots ready-formed in people's lives, although real lives may provide material out of which such a plot may be constructed by ruthless elimination of all but a few carefully highlighted incidents. The full story of all the events in Othello's whole life would be a complete bore" (p 140). It struck me that when you read about someone's life, you typically don't read about everything that ever happened to them. You read about the most interesting parts, otherwise you would be completely bored. It never really dawned on me until reading that that narrative is somewhat fictional. All narrative selects interesting aspects or events, and then only tells about those. This gives the reader an imperfect view of the characters and the events that are happening. Like watching a movie through a straw, you only see a small portion of the bigger picture, a small portion of the truth.

The most interesting idea that I am taking away from this book, is that literacy has changed everything about culture. Nothing has gone untouched by literacy, everything has shifted since writing was introduced to orality. The way we think, the way we talk, the way we tell stories. All has changed. I had never really thought about how much in our culture is credited to our ability to write things down. I used to look at oral cultures as if they were missing out, like they have simply not evolved into what they are destined to be yet. But that is putting the cart before the horse, for everything that we accredit to literacy, must be first credited to orality. Without the ability to speak, we would not have the ability to write, and therefore to create and live like we do.

Orality and Literacy: Part 1

To be completely honest, I found Orality and Literacy to be quite dense and difficult to read. I read the first chapter twice, so I could understand it, and it wasn’t until the second time around that I started developing an interest in what the author was writing about. The author brought up several points in the first chapter alone that I had never considered before. For example, because we live in a literate culture, when someone is speaking to me, I process what they are saying as formed letters in my mind. Literacy has permeated the way we think, speak, interact with others, and live.

                

Ong writes about how orality is independent of the written, but the written is entirely dependent on the oral. An interesting concept when we realize that we think of primarily oral cultures as primitive. In America particularly, I think, we associate this idea of intelligence with the ability to write. We refuse to hand out certificates of competence (GED/equivalent) without one being able to read and write at a certain level. But what if someone who fails to achieve literacy would have thrived in a primarily oral culture? There are thousands of adults in the United States that we consider to be illiterate because they cannot read or write. Thousands. If literacy is so closely tied to intelligence, or someone’s ability to survive or thrive in this world, then why do we still have so many who have not developed the ability to read and write?

                

That also brings up a good point: reading and writing, in its most basic form, is a developed ability. Speech, in its highest forms, is also a developed ability, but the lowest level of speech (making verbal sounds) is not a developed ability, it is a natural ability. One could argue that babies are born with the inherent ability to “speak”, albeit in their own language of crying and cooing. Humans have since developed these noises into a system of carefully placed sounds to create a complex verbal language. In many “non-primitive” cultures, we have then developed our languages into the written form. I believe one could argue that the same pace of development has also occurred within primarily oral cultures as well, but rather than develop written versions of their language, they are developing exceptional memories, better listening ability, and a more complex oral language. So “primitive”, in the common sense that we use to describe lesser-things as primitive, may be the wrong phrasing.

                

I find it particularly interesting that we are learning about how important orality is to literacy, and yet I never would have known any of this information, or have come to any of these conclusions had it not been for the literature that we have been assigned in this class. It brings to mind the complex connections that exist between literacy and orality, and the dependency that we have on both of them to have a successfully functioning society in America and other literate cultures.