Comparing Retribution in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Roy’s The God O

Comparing Retribution in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Roy’s The God Of Small Things A close look at two novels, Things Fall Apart, and The God Of Small Things, reveals examples of how their authors illustrate that fate supplies retribution for wrongs done. In Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart, there are three linked instances of this type of retribution. First, Ikemefuna details an innocent young man who is unknowingly punished for the crime of another person. Second, Okonkwo is exiled from his village for an accidental crime. Achebe suggests that this is more than coincidence, that this is repayment for his intentional murder of the boy who called him â€Å"father.† Finally, it is suggested that this punishment is also a consequence of his excessive pride. Without Okonkwo’s fear of weakness, he could have avoided killing the innocent Ikemefuna. In a completely different continent and time period, Arundhati Roy’s novel The God Of Small Things expresses very similar occurrences of retribution. In Roy’s novel, three pe ople’s lives are altered for the worse because of their involvement in two deaths. Ammu makes selfish and hasty decisions that end up coming back to haunt both her and her children. This in turn influences her children to make similar decisions, which prolong the cycle of punishment in their lives. The first instance of fated punishment we find in Achebe’s novel, Things Fall Apart, is in the death of a teenage boy, Ikemefuna. In this particular example, the burden of the crime is not borne by the guilty party. Ikemefuna, innocent of any crime himself, is forced from his village as payment for the crime of a member of his Mbaino community. More specifically, Ikemefuna’s father was involved i... ...ish. After all, they are set on different continents, and in different time periods. However it is clear that Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe, and The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy in truth, share a great deal of common ground. On multiple occasions in each novel, characters experience a grave twist of fate that can be attributed to the selfish actions of themselves or someone close to them. This explains why the most interesting similarity these two novels share is the underlying tension, and tone of fated retribution that is detailed above.   Ã‚   Works Cited 1. Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Twentieth Century. Ed. M. H. Abrams. W. W. Norton &Co. Inc.: New York, 2000. 2617-2706.    2. Roy, Arundhati. The God Of Small Things. HarperCollins Publishers Inc.: New York, 1997.