Okonkwo In Things Fall Apart

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Throughout time, parents have been the ones that make their children the people they grow up to be. Everything from a parent’s presence to their attitude shapes the way the person their child develops and becomes. In Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, Unoka’s laziness and status as the village beggar shape Okonkwo into be a harsh, cruel, hardworking man. Okonkwo grows up ashamed of his father, Unoka, which shapes Okonkwo to want to be the opposite. Okonkwo grows up in a family that “barely had enough to eat”, with a father that people “laughed at” (5). This embarrassing and dreary childhood guides Okonkwo to become a hard worker at a young age, so that his children will not have to endure the same adversity and pain. Okonkwo works tirelessly for Nwakibie so that he can start his own farm with yams. Okonkwo …show more content…

Sharecropping is the only way for a “young man whose father ha[s] no yams” to start a barn (22). Okonkwo works hard to make sure that his children will have barns of yams to start with, rather than having to sharecrop like he did. Okonkwo works to gain 800 yam seeds from Nwakibie so that he can start his own farm. Okonkwo works, so that he will be successful, unlike his father. Unoka’s failure as a father and as a man causes Okonkwo to have a deep-rooted fear of “failure and weakness” and in short, a fear of “[resembling] his father” (13). Okonkwo’s fears causes him to act irrationally and even cause him to have a short temper. He tries vigorously to do whatever Unoka did not and he avoids whatever Unoka did. Okonkwo treats his children harshly, beating them when they do a job incorrectly, even if he knows they are too young to understand the task. Okonkwo treats his children cruelly because he wishes to “stamp out” the “signs of laziness” that he subconsciously connects to his father (33). Okonkwo

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    In some misfortunate cases, this is not the situation and a child grows to loathe his parents. The children that are put into these situations are bound for one of two circumstances: rising up to success or falling down to failure. This condition becomes very germane to Okonkwo as he grows up and becomes a man. For instance, through the over exaggeration of the phrase “inherit a barn,” the speaker emphasizes the fact that Unoka, Okonkwo’s father, proves deficient in providing a pithy of resources for his family. Due to the values treasured most in the Igbo Tribe, one could consider him a bad father: “Okonkwo did not have the start in life which many young men usually had. He did not inherit a barn from his father. There was no barn to inherit”(Achebe 16). Here, the text suggests that Okonkwo has a very difficult life from the beginning. He is faced with many challenges as a young child, including his father, which relates directly to his fall later in the book. This sense of abandonment is present throughout the novel during Okonkwo’s life. Through the repetition of the noun “fear,” the speaker emphasizes Okonkwo’s true reality, his fear of nothing but himself. Despite all of Okonkwo’s pugnacious manliness, he is ruled by fear – a profound fear of being deemed weak and feminine, like his father: “Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear,

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