Achebe second half

They so do not judge a book by it's cover. The title however is completely true about the story. Okonkwo's life truly did fall apart. Not only did he loose the people closest to him, but also banished and upon returning he found that many things have changed. All thanks to the "white man" that had come to his village. They had the people converting to their religion and causing his people to loose their culture. Then after hearing and experiencing some of the things that changed in his village he decided to fight back. Yet even when he kills the messenger his people are confused onto what is happening. Then he finally came to the realization that his people are beyond changing back to the way they were.

Achebe

Okonkwo lives in an oral only culture. In his village much knowledge is passed down through proverbs that many people can interpret in different ways. I for one have found some confusing and believe that may be due to having writing being such a major part in my life. That writing has caused me to not fully understand the impact and thoughts that the words in some proverbs can give. When i was younger and heard proverbs I usually thought things along the line of, "There must be a better way to put what the proverbs means." In "Orality and Literacy" Ong talks about how people of oral cultures talk in proverbs in order to pass down knowledge and to make it easy to remember.

Ong second half

While reading “Orality and Literacy” I was surprised to read how Plato basically disliked writing. I never truly thought how writing might “destroy memory.” It makes me wonder if that is true due to being taught that writing things is to improve my memory of the subject. I write every single day to help improve my memory of something I am learning. Yet if writing is destroying my memory then does that mean had I been born into an oral only society would I have almost photographic memory? I can understand how that works because they only have their memory to teach each other or learn from what they do. Yet has our brains truly lost capacity for memory cause of the fact we were born into a society with writing. The topic just gets even more interesting with the advance technology today that enables us not to memorize so many small details such as meetings, where someone lives and much more. Whether it be a cell phone, a pad of paper or a computer they all are able to hold the information for us rather than out own mind. Which begs the question of have we lost even more memory capability due to the technology of our time?

Ong first half

I have never really imagined being in an oral only culture. Due to writing being completely part of the world I live in and forever will be. Not only have I been dealing with it since birth, but even almost all technology I use has been thanks to writing. Thanks to writing one can easily read what others have thought, are thinking and learn from just reading. While in an oral only culture everything that one knows is from their experiences and/or told to them by another.

In this day and age great deals of people write everyday or read something that is written. Especially with internet being developed, because it allows for instantaneous writing to people around the world to read. It can allow one to find most information he or she needs or is looking for from just typing a few words into a search engine. Many think that sometimes the internet can be a pain to find something very particular yet imagine without it and having to look in books to find it. Then if you look past that to before writing, to find anything you may want to know you have to ask around and hope that someone can tell you. Just as it is in a oral only society for example, if I wanted to know what this berry is called and if it is safe to eat. I could do two things to find out. One I could simply eat the berry and find out for myself or I could ask around in hopes that someone can tell me. Without writing many things that I do and comprehend would never have existed.