Post on Part 1 Things Fall Apart

I'm steadily realizing that many of the chapters are just meant to be little vignettes depicting various aspects of village life without necessarily relating (at least directly) to any overall storyline across the course of the book (now that Okonkwo and his family have fled that might change, but that still remains to be seen); for instance, the ceremony depicted in Chapter 10 with the arbitration between the man and his wife's family doesn't seem to relate to anything that comes before or after, as opposed to the chapter when Okonkwo kills Ikemefuna, which I think he discusses in the chapter after. I like this break up of chapters analyzing the mundanity of village life. I've also noted a lot of parallels between aspects of the society depicted by Achebe and contemporary society in the United States (the most obvious example I find is the love of public competitions of physical prowess, like the village wrestling matches vs the modern love of watching Football or other sports). I'm also interested to see how Okonkwo deals with himself in the aftermath of the accidental death; the way that it is discussed, as the "feminine" version of killing someone, intrigues me, as Okonkwo's obsession with masculinity might make him feel shame at having killed someone in that way even though it is probably a more socially acceptable form of killing and offers him the eventual opportunity to return the the village (I assume the purposeful killing of someone else wouldn't allow this, or at least would require much longer than seven years).