Culture or Blood?
When two people meet each other and decide to be together, it is only because of one factor, love, and although marriage relies on love, in today’s society, mixing ethnicities can cause family tension. These issues and controversies happened to a man that was in love. In “Marriage is a private affair” by Chinua Achebe, Nnaemeka fell in love with a woman that was not from the Ibo tribe and has to deal with the rage and rejection of his father. His wife, Nene is also marginalized from Nnaemeka’s family, and Okeke is held back from his sons life due to his cultural believes.
Nnaemeka was happy to finally find the woman he loves. Her name is Nene and she is the woman Nnaemeka had engaged to. Although his love towards her was tremendous, he was afraid to find out how his father would react to their engagement. Every time Nene asked Nnaemeka to let his father know of this wonderful news, he would reply with the same answer, telling her he would talk to him once he went home for his leave. The reason behind this was
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because Nnaemeka father was part of the Ibo tribe, and their beliefs in marriage were completely different as of what this young couple had in mind.
Soon enough, the letter Nnaemeka was not expecting had arrived. It was a letter from Okeke, his father. The letter said, “I have found a girl who will suit you admirably- Ugoye Nweke, the eldest daughter of our neighbor, Jacob Nweke. She has a proper Christian upbringing. When she stopped schooling some years ago, her father sent her to live in the house of a pastor where she has received all the training a wife could need. Her Sunday School teacher has told me that she reads her Bible very fluently. I hope we shall begin negotiations when you come home in December” (Okeke374). In the Ibo tribe, it is tradition that the father chooses who the son or daughter will marry. Okeke had finally found a girl that his son could marry, her name was Ugoye Nweke and she fit...