Fandom:Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Title:I'm bad at titles.
Words: 556
Rating:PG-13, or, rather, T
Summary: Sometimes, one can care too much.
Disclaimer:This does not belong to me, which I am kind of glad of, because I did not like the book.

English project. Got a 90, which is pretty much the highest anyone got, because the teacher is a notoriously difficult grader. So. I was glad.

REVEREND JAMES SMITH:

Ignorant. You are all so ignorant. You live in pagan squalor and you don't even know it--you--you people, you barely-human people, you tribal barbarians!

How can you speak of evil? You, who do not know God--you, who do not know what a struggle it is to keep your soul pure, to keep it clean, to yearn for heaven and never reach it; you don't know the good that is God and you can't know the evil that real civilization knows! You mutilate your children, your future, and you tell idiotic stories about how they are coming back to haunt you, evil; children, children! They are part of the Lord's flock--the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want--but it is so hard not to want in these surroundings--and you don't know it, you can't know want as real people know it.

You,all of you, you know nothing. Nothing! Brown led you to the Church and then he was--afraid, afraid of you--I'm not afraid--but he left you, went back out for more. No teachings, no respect. None of you know anything--and you genuflect with your knees and you make the cross with your fingers, you do not believe--nothing in your heart when you pray. I can tell. You feel nothing in your souls--and I don't know if you even have souls--you non-people. You strangers. Blasphemers, blasphemers all! You subscribers to the Devil! And you don't even know it!

Ignorance!

I hate it, I hate it, like God says you mustn't--but I must! You still wear your amulets--your pendants--simple voodoo nonsense--whatever it is! You, you think--if that, you inhuman creatures--foreign, so foreign--alien; you think of gods, never God! Sticks, stones, idols. No God! Never God. Idols. The Golden Calf, and worse--Moses! Moses, where are you when I need you? Idols and idles. Don't remain idle in your faith, the way you are being idle now . . . the way you are idle in your old religion--old religion, not this one, you are no longer of Umuofia, so don't act like it--you have to earn yourself a place before God and you aren't, you're not even trying--you cannot be that way here; you take responsibility, God watches your souls but you have to help. Fatalistic fools! You do not embrace Him in your heart . . . you wear your meager Christianity like--like--like some coat; a shirt to--to take off if it's not needed--and you ask me if you are saved!

Saved. Saved. What a laugh. You, saved--as if you could understand the true happiness--it only comes with a sure place in heaven! You. So ignorant. So foolish and uneducated.

Brown left you--grasping--gasping in your new Church like fish--fishes and loaves! fishes and loaves! You are without your fishes and loaves! You are without your holy sustenance. I have to provide it . . . I have to provide your soul with nourishment.

Educated. Educate. I must educate. I must. I must reach heaven. Not like Brown. I must. Listen, just listen to God, and I can leave you alone! Listen. Please. Listen.

But your eyes--your eyes. Dark. Expressive. Hope. Hope! You are not people, but . . . but--you might be--