Preview

Okonkwo In Things Fall Apart

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
247 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Okonkwo In Things Fall Apart
Okonkwo lives in Nigeria in the Umuofia clan and is well respected among the village for he is strong and very successful. However, he has a fear of weakness and its connection to femininity because his father, who he is ashamed of, was someone who was coward, lazy, weak, and could not support his family. This is another reason as to why one of Okonkwo’s characteristic is so cold and brutal, trying to always be as masculine as he can. However, Okonkwo’s eldest son, Nwoye, fails to reflect the same traits as him. Nwoye is described as lazy and feminine in the novel which scares Okonkwo because he doesn’t want him to become like his father. In chapter two when the narrator was describing the work Okonkwo does during planting season, the concern
Continue Reading
View Writing Issues

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Okonkwo In Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart
    • 687 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Okonkwo In Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

    His father fears raising a son like his own lazy father. As Nwoye grows up, Okonkwo tries to suppress any possible sign of this by “constant nagging and beating” (Achebe 14). From a young age, Nwoye internalizes that he is worthless. He only receives praise from his mother, who, as a woman, is supposedly insignificant. His greatest role model is constantly and violently ashamed of him. Nwoye feels like an outsider. He feels “a snapping inside him” after Okonkwo’s abuses. (Achebe 61). When the missionaries arrive, Nwoye visits the church out of curiosity and returns home to a harsh beating. As soon as Okonkwo lets him go, Nwoye “walk[s] away and never return[s],” leaving for a Christian school in another village (Achebe 152). To save himself, Nwoye has to escape his situation, but that means escaping everything. He cannot pick and choose and in the end has to leave everything that has made him who he is for a chance at…

    • 687 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    THINGS FALL APART FINALS REVIEW
    • 3934 Words
    • 21 Pages

    THINGS FALL APART FINALS REVIEW

    But throughout the novel, we are shown men with more sophisticated understanding of masculinity. Okonkwo's harshness drives Nwoye away from the family and into the arms of the new religion. Fear For all of his desire to be strong, Okonkwo is haunted by fear. He is profoundly afraid of failure, and he is afraid of being considered weak.…

    • 3934 Words
    • 21 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart: Inevitable Suffering in Tragedies
    • 624 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart: Inevitable Suffering in Tragedies

    Nwoye also suffers more than his father's physical beatings. Okonkwo frequently compares his eldest son to his father Unoka and sees Nwoye as lazy and not masculine enough while Nwoye sought to please his father feigning his care for women's stories, acting the way Okonkwo…

    • 624 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Okonkwo In Things Fall Apart
    • 63 Words
    • 1 Page

    Okonkwo In Things Fall Apart

    Okonkwo, the main character in Things Fall Apart, is a hard headed man. He is very custom to his tribe's way of life. He believes a woman's place is in the house, cleaning cooking and taking care of the children. Okonkwo's father was not an acceptable man in Igbo society. His father was in extreme debt and was not a very structured man.…

    • 63 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Songs which related to Things Fall Apart
    • 397 Words
    • 12 Pages

    Songs which related to Things Fall Apart

    This relates to Things Fall Apart, in Chapter 2 because you can see that Okonkwo pressures his son, Nwoye, to be just like him. Okonkwo then finds Nwoye, to be very lazy and starts to beat him to “man him up” and make him tough like a man should be. Nwoye then becomes more attached to Ikemefuna, who shows care and comfort and becomes very distant and shows no interest in his father Okonkwo anymore.…

    • 397 Words
    • 12 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Okonkwo The Power Hungry Warrior in Things Fall Apart
    • 1309 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Okonkwo The Power Hungry Warrior in Things Fall Apart

    Okonkwo’s obsession with power can first be seen through his duties as a farmer. In the book, Okonkwo, as well as being a great warrior and wrestler to feed his thirst for power, also was a very successful farmer in an effort to increase his social status in the village. The characteristic that set Okonkwo apart from the rest of the farmers was his ambition to become the best. Though being an ambitious person may seem like a good quality, Okonkwo’s mixture of arrogance and ambition gets the best of him when he tried to ignore nature and relies solely on his abilities as a farmer to grow yams on dry soil, but sadly produced nothing. An example from the book that can be seen was when it started to rain. Okonkwo began to farm right away and overcompensated the rain and planted four hundred seeds, only to find the soil has dried out the next morning. Still, Okonkwo tried to do whatever it takes to get them to grow but failed. This can be expressed in the book by how the author describes how much effort Okonkwo put into trying to save his yams by writing, “He had tried to protect them from the smoldering earth by making rings of thick sisal leaves around them. But by the end…

    • 1309 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    Things Fall Apart-Notion of Balance Analysis
    • 1643 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Things Fall Apart-Notion of Balance Analysis

    Okonkwo, the main character of the book, was born the son of Unoka, who was a loafer. Unoka was too lazy to go out and plant crops on new, fertile land, and preferred to stay at home playing his flute, drinking palm wine, and making merry with the neighbors. Because of this, his father never had enough money, and his family went hungry. He borrowed much money in order to maintain this lifestyle. Okonkwo perceived this as an imbalance toward the female side in his father's character: staying at home and not using one's strength to provide for the family is what the women do. In reaction, Okonkwo completely rejected his father, and therefore the feminine side of himself. He became a star wrestler and warrior in his tribe and began providing for his family at a very young age, while at the same time starting new farms and beginning to amass wealth. He is very successful, and soon becomes one of the leaders of his tribe and has many wives and children. His big ambition is to become one of the powerful elders of the tribe, for what could be more manly than that?…

    • 1643 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Igbo Religion In Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart
    • 659 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Igbo Religion In Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

    Okonkwo always speaks of the significance of their traditions, constantly reminding his firstborn of the pressure he has to be great. Ultimately, Okonkwo’s fears of his own father become a major factor in Nwoye’s journey to converting to Christianity. In order to prevent his son from turning into his own father, “[Okonkwo] sought to correct him by constant nagging and beating. And so Nwoye was developing into a sad-faced youth” (Achebe 13-14). Though Okonkwo’s heart is seemingly in the right place, his attempts to change twelve-year-old Nwoye only push him further away “[and] the boy was afraid of him” (Achebe 63). The apprehension caused by Okonkwo’s comments about laziness and masculinity are the start of Nwoye’s resistance to both his father and his religion. Even as a young boy, he oppressed his interest in subjects that were considered to be feminine, for fear of upsetting his father. Furthermore, despite his anger after Ikemefuna’s death, he continues to attempt to please his father and push his uncertainties to the back of his mind. However, upon the arrival of the Christian preachers, he begins to allow himself to ask the questions he has wondered all…

    • 659 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Masculinity and male relationship: Things Fall Apart, Who Will Stop The Dark
    • 1291 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Masculinity and male relationship: Things Fall Apart, Who Will Stop The Dark

    Chinua Achebe uses the theme of masculinity to describe the rise of Okonkwo’s social standing. In the novel, Okonkwo is very obsessed with masculinity, and he defines quite scarcely. According to him any kind of sensitivity is a sign of weakness. Okonkwo believes in authority and brute force. His pride and masculinity is very correlated. According to Okonkwo his father lacks ambition, is lazy, weak, and feminine. In the novel its states that “Even as a little boy he had resented his father's failure and weakness, and even now he still remembered how he had suffered when a playmate had told him that his father was agbala. That was how Okonkwo first came to know that agbala was not only another name for a woman, it could also mean a man who had taken no title.”1 Growing up Okonkwo did everything possible not to resemble his father because his father resembled a woman with no title.…

    • 1291 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Okonkwo In Things Fall Apart
    • 1054 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Okonkwo In Things Fall Apart

    Throughout the book, Okonkwo shows his determination to succeed. He was driven by the fear of his father- to avoid being weak and feminine, and as such, he developed into someone who was known for his perseverance, and it is indeed a shock that the protagonist eventually commits suicide, since one would have thought that he would possess enough courage to face the consequences. During the year of share-cropping, a vital year to Okonkwo, that marked the start of his career as a prosperous farmer, the rain poured, and the crops were destroyed. As many were discouraged,…

    • 1054 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Things Fall Apart 6
    • 458 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Things Fall Apart 6

    In another part of the story, Okonkwo is banished from his fatherland. This incident is the first where he is punished greatly for his actions. It marks a turning point in Okonkwo’s downfall, and therefore the downfall of the traditional culture that he stands for. His hopes and aspirations are almost forgotten while he is away from Umuofia, and he desperately tries to regain his status when he returns. During this period of time, Okonkwo also discovers that his son has converted to his enemy’s ways and beliefs. He abandons his son, and doesn’t want to be his father any longer. This shows that his relationships with family and…

    • 458 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Okonkwo's Manhood
    • 1411 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Okonkwo's Manhood

    ch1. Chapter 1 describes Okonkwo's principal accomplishments that establish his important position in Igbo society. These details alone provide insight into Okonkwo's character and motivation. Driving himself toward tribal success and recognition, he is trying to bury the unending shame that he feels regarding the faults and failures of his late father, Unoka. Essentially, Okonkwo exhibits qualities of manhood in Igbo society.…

    • 1411 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Nwoye Okonkwo Analysis
    • 180 Words
    • 1 Page

    Nwoye Okonkwo Analysis

    Nwoye Okonkwo’s eldest son suffers from his father's mistreatment. Okonkwo's behavior consists of comparing Nwoye to his father Unoka a titleless and unsuccessful man. In chapter 1 Unoka is described as “lazy and improvident” (4) in Okonkwo's eyes. Nwoye is a boy who has trouble adapting to his culture believes. In chapter 7 when Ikemefuna was “to be taken home” Nwoye over heard it and bursted into tears” he deeply saw ikemefuna as a brother.…

    • 180 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Igbo Gender Roles
    • 818 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Igbo Gender Roles

    He hates anything feminine, and wants to be only extremely masculine. (Shmoop) He wants the same for his sons. Okonkwo would tell his sons masculine stories about blood and battle. His daughters heard stories from his wives about how to win the approval of men, and how to carry themselves in order to please their husbands. Okonkwo 's son, Nwoye, "somehow still preferred the stories that his mother used to tell… stories of tortoise and his wily ways… But he knew that they were for foolish women and children, and he knew that his father wanted him to be a man. And so he feigned that he no longer cared for women 's stories. And when he did this he saw that his father was pleased and no longer rebuked him or beat him" (38).…

    • 818 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Songs Relating to "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe
    • 1182 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Songs Relating to "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe

    This relates to Things Fall Apart because in chapter 2 you can see that Okonkwo pressures his son, Nwoye, to be just like him. Okonkwo find Nwoye to be lazy and not manly enough so he beats and nags at him constantly. Nwoye then becomes more attached to Ikemefuna who is shows care and comfort and becomes less attached to his father who is far more heavy-handed and intimidating.…

    • 1182 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More

Related Topics