Chinua Achebe's Yams....oh & Things Fall Apart

In Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, yams, a prominent vegetable, reappear a few, times to say the least, throughout the novel.

Yams, yams, yams. What the heck is with all of these yams? In this blog post I will trace the symbolism of the yams throughout the novel(or up to Chapter 19).

I have narrowed down a few themes to which the yams connect too: wealth, power, and celebrations/gatherings. 

As far as I have read, the amount of yams and how successful your crop is controls your wealth. Okonkwo, the protagonist in the novel, gains his title and status by planting a thunderous amount of viable yams. When Okonkwo gets exiled to his "motherland", his cousins "contributed three hundred seed yams to enable thier cousin[Okonkwo] to plant a farm"(130). Basically the cousins attributed and helped Okonkwo live prosperously. This would be a great system for the United States; where we can base wealth not on the qaulity of the car you own, but on the amount and condition of yams! Instead of the Big Mac Index it would be the Big Yam Index for world wealth.
Very similar to the concept of yams correlating to wealth, they can represent power. It is often that the amount of wealth can be proportionate to the power. Also the grandeur of a yam farm represents hard work, which is perceived as a manly characteristic in this book. Might I mention, that in Things Fall Apart women get little to no recognition. It is considered mocking and is looked down upon if you are called a women, or agbala.

Every time in the novel when people are gathering at a person's obi, or house, a yam foo-foo dish is made.

Above is a picture of yam foo foo. Often accompanied by a soup, yam foo foo is a puree of yams kneaded into a dough. 

When a women would make a yam dish, it would typically mean that there was company, an event, or a ceremony going to happen. At Obierika's, a friend of Okonknwos, daughter's bride-prince ceremony, "foo-foo was pounded in a hundred wooden mortars." (113). 

For your information, the word "yam(s)" are said about 100 times in the book! Yams are the most prominent crop and  it is not a vegetable to overlook in this novel!

Ken Robinson's TED talk: "How school kills creativity"

For this blog post, we were given the task of watching a TED talk and writing thoughts we had in response to the video.

Simply, I searched ‘popular TED talks’ into Google and stumbled upon a link to a YouTube video of a TED talk called "How school kills creativity". Like any other student, I gravitated towards this video because I can use it for reasons in the future for why I don't have to go to school:  My mom would ask, "Rachael, why aren't you going to school?" and I would obviously respond, "Because my creativity is low, school is killing it" HA-HA! 

Sir Ken Robinson in this video (see below) talks passionately about how school does not promote creativity like they do mathematics or English. He says that when kids go to school they grow out of their creativity. Interesting…

He defines creativity as the process of having original ideas that have value.

One statement that stuck out to me was how he said that literacy is just as important as creativity. Later, he embellishes by stating that dance is as important as math. I love how simply,but potently he articulates those comparisons.

However much I want to agree with him, I cannot. Although I feel like some schools do put you into a cookie cutter situation of his learning hierarchy that he mentioned, the education that I have received, at least at my current school, is different.

Going to a unique private school, whose main focus is to prepare you for the future in the career path that best suits and interests you, this “dance being as important as math” statement has been a large part of the education that I receive. Proudly, I am not a dancer, or a singer, or even an actor, I play sports. The community at my school has really embraced who I am and has interlaced my talents and passions into my schoolwork. At the end of the school year, every student does a big project to show what they have accomplished in English class. The student can choose whatever topic and method to portray their work that they have done, relating to a common theme. Last year, I remember creating a presentation about the sports I play to present my work. 

I feel like the high school that I go to, does a fabulous job of embracing the creativity of students. We are allowed to follow whatever passion we may have and even do it with peer support.

Robinson did bring up other points on how the academic ability of students has engulfed our view of intelligence and I would like to end on a quote by Albert Einstein, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”