what’s challenging about this actually is that there is no utopic happy ending. the culture of the tribes is deeply mystical and spiritual, it’s history rich, and it’s people serious, happy, tortured, and real… so they’re not living blissful lives pre-colonization by any means. okonkwo is by way of his culture a man that is deeply misogynistic and cruel, but someone you must admire— building himself up literally from nothing, on some borrowed yams. he’s proud and he’s cruel and then to no fault of his own things fall apart and everything changes. and it’s no more beatific or perfect than the way things were, but it’s implemented through trickery and through force. it turns all that should be bound through culture and kinship into the strange and uncanny