Similarities between Greek Mythology and Things Fall Apart

I've noticed a lot of similarities between Things Fall Apart and the Greek Mythology including the return and the death of a king, dislike of twins, and the existence of oracles.

1. The return and the death of a king:
In The Oresteia by Aeschylus, Agamemnon returns from war and is welcomed by his wife, Clytaemnestra. However, Clytaemnestra welcomes him with a crimson red carpet which is too much of a God-like or womanly welcome. Like Okonkwo, Agamemnon has been gone for so long that their home has changed. Umuofia has become soft in allowing the white people to establish their church, religion, and government in their land, and Clytaemnestra has become a strong, manly ruler of Agamemnon's throne. Both Agamemnon and Okonkwo seek a warm welcome, but each marked their impending deaths. Agamemnon subdued to Clytaemnestra's overly grand welcome that could be punishable by the Gods and walked on the crimson red carpet into his home and killed him. Okonkwo fails achieve his goals (to initiate his sons into the ozo and build his rank when he returned) and also fails to lead his people into war against the whites. I think since Okonkwo could not take such failures- the ultimate failure of his his great "to become one of the lords of the clan (131), he hung himself.

2. Twins:
Similar to Greek culture, twins are thrown away in the Umuofia tribe. Traditionally, in Greek culture, the twins (both sons) would compete for their father's throne and inheritance, thus only leading to bloodshed. This is probably why Umuofia and the Greeks are similar because they have traditions and the Western culture branched from Britain and Europeans. They weren't exactly around when violence was a part of their culture.

3. Oracles:
Even though the oracles demand a sacrifice of an innocent child, the people must obey or else the God's wrath will harm their soil. The oracles usually prophesize the killing of an innocent to appease the Gods, but Okonkwo slowly realizes that their prophecies aren't exactly justified. For instance, he had to murder Ikemefuna, an innocent boy who Okonkwon had taken in as a son and came to like. Also, the elders of the Abame tribe consulted their oracle and "it told them that the strange man would break their clan spread destruction among them" (138). So they decided to kill him and tie his iron horse to the sacred tree. Ironically, if they hadn't killed him, Abame probably wouldn't have been wiped out.

Also in the Euripidies' Bacchae, the idea of only the initiates can see the God, Dionysos. Only the initiates were allowed to know what goes on during the festival gatherings of the initiates and till this day we don't know their actions because they've been sworn to secrecy. We also see in Things Fall Apart, "one of the greates crimes a man could commit was to unmask an egwugwu in public, or to say or do anything which might reduce its immortal prestige in the eyes of the unitiated" (186). The glory, or kleos, of the Gods is represented in costumes and masks worn by mortals, but hidden from the unitiated, who don't believe in the God.

Again, the question of whether or not a man can overcome his destiny as fated by the Gods reappears in this text. At the beginning of the novel, we learn that if a man says yes, then his chi says yes also, portraying the idea that a man has his own will and makes his own destiny. However, Okonkwo discovers for himself that " a man could not rise beyond the destiny of his chi" (131). This means that his destiny his predetermined and his actions nor will cannot change it. For example, Oedipus tried to avoid the prophecy's warnings against his murder of his father and sex with his mother. Then he becomes king of Thebes and exacts revenge on the previous king that was murdered... but the king was his father and he already went to bed with the queen who was his mother. Also, in my previous post, I mentioned in The Stranger, the idea of chance versus fate- again the will of the Gods.