Thesis and Outline for TFA essay

Thesis: Through dispelling untrue myths, showing some of the single story flaws to be true, and demonstrating positive aspects of these communities, Achebe and Sandler attempt to complete the single stories of Africa and only children.

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

"Only Children: Lonely and Selfish?" article from the New York Times by Lauren Sandler


I. Achebe and Sandler destroy the single stories by making arguments against untrue myths

A. "In hundreds of studies during the past decades exploring 16 character traits — including leadership, maturity, extroversion, social participation, popularity, generosity, cooperativeness, flexibility, emotional stability, contentment — only children scored just as well as children with siblings"

B. "It turns out brutal sibling rivalry isn’t necessary to beat the ego out of us; peers and classmates do the job."

C. "Their findings suggest that solitude is not synonymous with loneliness and often strengthens character."

D. "Among the Ibo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten. Okoye was a great talker and he spoke for a long time, skirting around the subject and hitting it finally."(7)




II. Achebe and Sandler complete the single stories of their communities by revealing the flaws of the single story that are true

A."Still there is something existentially troubling about the idea of facing one’s parents’ mortality alone"

B. "And when she returned he beat her very heavily" (29) 

III. Achebe and Sandler complete the single stories by showing the positive aspects of their communities that people do not usually associate with Africa and only children

A. "Never kill a man who says nothing. Those men of Abame were fools. What did they know about the man?" (140)

B. "found that only children had demonstrably higher intelligence and achievement; only children have also been found to have more self-esteem."

Things Fall Apart- Exiling

Is it right for a man to be punished for something that was not his fault?



This question can be very controversial. From one point of view, even if it was not the man's fault, it still happened therefore he should be punished. There is another point of view that because it was an accident and not his fault, the man should be forgiven and not punished.



However, it is not just one answer for every incident where this happens. The answer could depend on many different variables such as the severity of the incident and what he is being accused for.



This question arose for me when i read Things Fall Apart. "Okonkwo's gun had exploded and a piece of iron had pierced the boy's heart" (Achebe 125). Because of this fluke explosion, he killed the boy at the funeral. In their society, this had a major consequence, to be exiled from the village for 7 years. There was no question about it, under that circumstance, his family had to be exiled. I thought this was too harsh when I read it. I believe that maybe a debt of yams would have been a more appropriate consequence because a man was killed because of him, BUT it was not his fault the gun exploded.



Obierika later questions "why should a man suffer so grievously for an offense he had committed inadvertently?" (Achebe 125). When I read through this part in the book, I had questioned the exact same thing. Not everyone in the tribe thought it was the right punishment, but they all knew that they could not change anything by speaking up, so they left it the way it was.


Throughout the book, we see that this tribe had many traditions that HAD to be followed. This had to happen if someone committed that crime so no one questioned it or tried to fight it. If something like that happened today, the person would fight and try to win the case to not be punished. There clearly are major differences from then and today.

Matt Killingsworth: Want to be happier?

In this TED talk, Matt Killingsworth talks about happiness.

He starts by talking about how people in the past strived for things like a bigger house, a nicer car, and a good job. They thought that these were the keys to happiness. Recently however, he says that people have been thinking scientifically of how people could be happier.

So, as a scientist himself, he created an app called Track Your Happiness. The app sent you alerts daily asking three questions. It asked 1. How happy are you on a scale of very good or very bad 2. what are you doing (22 activities you could have been doing) and 3. Are you focused or mind wandering about something neutral, pleasant, or negative. They collected a lot of data and came to some conclusions.

He concluded that no matter what your mind is wandering about, pleasant or not, that people are always happier in the moment focused on the task they are doing. Who knew--that to be happier you could just focus on what you are doing? It seems like when you are sad, you might wander about happy things, but according to Killlingsworth, just focusing and living in the moment will keep you happier.

So their data pointed to a connection with mind wandering and unhappiness. They had to distinguish which was the cause and effect, because in life, there is always one that causes the other. They wanted to know if mind wandering caused unhappiness as they hypothesized or if unhappiness caused someone to wander. Personally, it seems logically like unhappiness causes someone to wander because they would wanna get to a better place and think about happier times, but it's actually the opposite. Most of the time, mind-wandering causes unhappiness because when people wander, they eventually think about mistakes, bad times, and regrets.

So, pretty simple right? Just stay in the moment and don't mind wander to stay happier. That's what Matt Killingsworth says. Try it out.

Although it does seem hard not to wander. According to his app's data, of all the 22 activities, most of the percent time wandering was around 50% with a max of around 75% in the shower and a minimum of 10% during sex. A second lowest was around 30% showing how much people actually do wander. He showed graphs showing how the people's average happiness when focused is slightly higher when they are mind wandering about pleasant things, significantly higher than when they wander about neutral things and way higher then when thinking about unpleasant things. Therefore Killingsworth compares mind wandering to a slot machine where you lose 50$, 20$, or just 1$, clever isn't it?