" Okonkwo was too proud to have stayed home and done the ethical thing. Okonkwo's pride is displayed throughout the entire book with his constant focus on strength and his fear of being thought of as a coward. Going from the beginning to the end, in chapter 24 Okonkwo kills a head messenger during a meeting. " He knew that Umuofia would not got to war.
The novel “things fall apart” is about the fatal demise of Okonkwo and the igbo culture of Umuofia. Okonkwo is well known and respected leader in his community, who is successful in everything he does, such as wrestling and farming. He is quick with his hands and takes pride in his accomplishments. Okonkwo’s family relationship makes him a sympathetic character because of his support and an unsympathetic character because of his cruelty. In many ways Okonkwo showed that he had no sympathy for others , However at times he could be sympathetic.
Prompt 2 Okonkwo is driven by his hatred of his father and the fear he will become like him. Okonkwo saw his father, Unoka, as a coward and is ashamed to be his son. Everything that Okonkwo does is meant to set him apart from the legacy of his father. First, this is evident in his beating of his wives and even his aggression with his children. He is trying to show his strength and ensure he is not portrayed to be like his father: powerless and incapable.
This also represents the importance of image to him and shows that he is self-conscious about himself. “‘We shall not do you any harm,’ said the District Commissioner..” (Achebe 194). This is quite ironic since the Europeans ended up abusing Okonkwo and his comrades and eventually destroying the Igbo culture. In this quote the author is implying that in the European's’ perspective, they are doing a good thing for the Igbo in the Umuofia by changing their beliefs, but in reality they are destroying their culture which the foundation and the identity of the Igbo.
Among those of the same culture, individuals who are adaptive and open-minded can be successful when there is cultural collision. When the Igbo and European cultures collide, Okonkwo gradually spirals out of control, losing everything he values and his own sense of self. From the beginning of the novel, Achebe depicts Okonkwo as a virile warrior and a successful farmer within the Igbo tribe. Reacting with violence to anything he considers “womanly” or “weak”, “He was a man of action and man of war” (10). Because of his reputation as a warrior he is highly respected by his community.
Okonkwo wanted his tribe to fight back the missionaries in order to protect their Igbo culture but his persistence only led to his downfall. This can be seen when Okonkwo makes a rash decision to kill a messenger thinking Umuofia would fight back but ended up not fighting, “The white man whose power you know too well has ordered this meeting to stop.” In a flash, Okonkwo drew his machete. The messenger crouched to avoid the blow. It was useless.
In Umuofia, Okonkwo has a high title, earned by demonstrating his achievement in his city. He is recognized everywhere for being a great wrestler who beat Amalinze the Cat. In chapter one, it says that “He brought honor to his village by throwing Amalinze the Cat” (Achebe 3). Okonkwo made it his goal to demonstrate himself powerfully to the community because his father, Unoka, was the opposite. The emotional, lazy, gentile, and unsuccessful Unoka was interested in music and drinking, and he didn 't try hard to make a name for himself.
In the book “Things Fall Apart“ Okonkwo is a very strong man and from time to time he starts showing his true self. He has a lot of responsibilities and other things he has to do around the living environment and interact with lots of people. Okonkwo changes from being that strong man, to a man who feels like his tribe is not with him when he wants to go to war with the missionaries. For someone like Okonkwo a lot of people looks up to him and while in the tribe Okonkwo beats his wives and children. Not good behavior for someone who is supposedly looked at as strong.
When Okonkwo first returns back from his exile and hears the news of the white man in Umuofia, his anger increases that no one is trying to fight them. Even after his friend Obierika tells him about how the village Abame was destroyed by similar white missionaries Okonkwo simply thinks “Abame people were weak and foolish. Why did they not fight back... We would be cowards to compare ourselves to the men of Abame” (175). Okonkwo 's aggression blinds him to the dangers of rebelling against the white man, that he is willing to risk the destruction of his whole village just to satisfy his ideology of respecting his religion.
Okonkwo was a big supporter of physical and verbal abuse in his home, especially towards his wives and Nwoye. To Okonkwo, physical abuse was another language. This is how he spoke, and punished, on the occasion of the abuse, and how he had handled the situation. Women was treated poorly in Umuofia because men believe that they were weak and in inadequate. “ Even as a little boy Okonkwo had represented 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.
Q1: Explain how Okonkwo’s father, Unoka, influenced his life. A1: Okonkwo’s father, Unoka, influenced Okonkwo’s life because he had been a failure in life. Unoka was a lazy and improvident debtor. In his youth he lived a carefree life and would visit different villages and market to play on his flute and feast.
This springs a collision between Okonkwo and Nwoye. Nwoye wants to become Christian and Okonkwo does not approve of what the white men introduced to the Ibo culture. There were other people in the clan like Okonkwo that went against their faith and claimed that everything the Christians believe in was false. Nwoye knows his father has a bad temper and so when Okonkwo found out that he wanted to convert, Nwoye knew that it would cause conflict, and Okonkwo would want to kill him. " Answer me," roared Okonkwo, "before I kill you!"
Okonkwo uses these traits to differentiate from Unoka and he even feels most like himself when he exhibits violent behavior in order to assert his power and authority over others. Literary critic Christopher Ouma affirmed Okonkwo’s genuine intention to change how he is regarded in society.
From being nothing in his village he rises to be a great, honorable, successful leader of umuofia. He also has a tragic flaw of being weak, failure and having fear that leads him to fail at things several times because of his fears. All of these failures then lead him to his suicide. Finally, he finds his own tragic fate because of his murder of the missionaries court messenger during his villages meeting. Though Okonkwo's life started out as one of the most successful and leading men of Umuofia but because of his violent and impulsive characteristics, even the most successful and well-respected man can fall from his
His father was the exact opposite of what the Igbo people stand for. Unoka, Okonkwo’s father, is a “coward [who] could not bear the sight of blood” (Achebe 6). In turn, Okonkwo became a ruthless warrior who was known across the different tribes. The worst aspect of Unoka is that he was considered to be a failure. This caused Okonkwo “even as a little boy [to resent] his father’s failure” (13).
