Okonkwo was held in high esteem within his clan of Umuofia. He was a self-made man and created his riches without the help from anyone else. His estate included his personal hut, huts for his three wives and children, shrine room, storage for yams and kola nuts, and shelter for his wives chickens and his goats. This estate was then enclosed by a large earthen wall. In addition to the physical riches he held, yams, kola nuts, and livestock, he also had attained two out of the four tribal titles that a person could hold, and well on his way to attaining the third (Achebe, 1994). These were feats not many tribal members had attained, including his father, who had none. Although Okonkwo held many tribal titles and was held in high esteem within the clan, his disdain for his father, not the presence of the Christian missionaries, caused Okonkwo to commit suicide. Because of his father’s lack of achievements, both in physical riches and tribal standing, as he was a loafer, everything did Okonkwo was so he was to not be associated with his father’s legacy (Asamoah-Gyadu, 2010). Unoka, Okonkwo’s father, was a disappointment of …show more content…
He was a very proud man and did not take kindly to being questioned, especially by those whom he considered of lesser social character (Ikuenobe, 2006). Such as the case of calling another male villager a “woman” while in a meeting because he did not have any titles (Achebe, 1994). Being questioned by a “lesser” man was equivalent to being weak, and Okonkwo had a fear of being seen as weak and lazy, like his father. However, because he had this fear, his ability to fully integrate with the clans virtues, such as humility and compassion, he lacked the ability to enjoy some of the “restful and festive periods” that the village had, such as the Week of Peace (Ikuenobe,
Okonkwo is one of the most powerful men in the Ibo tribe. In his tribe, he is both feared and honored. This is evident by this quote, "Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond... [He] brought honor to his tribe by throwing Amalinze the Cat..."(3) This suggests that in Okonkwo's society, power is attained by making a name for yourself in any way possible, even if that means fighting and wrestling to get your fame. Although honor is a good thing, when people have to fight to gain it, it becomes an object of less adoration. Okonkwo's "prosperity was visible in his household... his own hut stood behind the only gate in the red walls. Each of his three wives had her own hut... long stacks of yams stood out prosperously in [the barn]... [Okonkwo] offers prayers on the behalf of himself, his three wives, and eight children." (14) Okonkwo has also worked and tended to his crops in a very zealous fashion, and drives everyone around him to work as hard as he does. Because of this, he earns his place as one of Umuofia's most powerful men. In many cultures, a big family is a source of pride. Although Okonkwo is not always pleased by his children and wives, it also brings him a source of pride to have three wives and eight children. Large families mean that the head of the family is able to support all of them. Okonkwo's devotion to his crops and family gives to him the respect that any father and husband deserves, and in his culture, being able to fight and kill as well gives him even more influence and power.
Okonkwo’s fear of unmanliness is kindled by his father, who was a lazy, unaccomplished man. Okonkwo strives to have a high status from a young age and eventually achieves it. He has a large family, many yams and is well known throughout the village for his valor. He raises his family by his mentality of manliness and is ...
Okonkwo's life was driven by his strong desire for status. In Okonkwo’s eyes, status was defined in two parts. The first part being how much respect and how many titles one has. Okonkwo goes to extreme odds to gain respect in his village, Umuofia. Okonkwo’s opinions on success relating to titles is displayed very early on. An example of this
At the beginning of the novel Okonkwo was a fairly wealthy and well-respected member of the Igbo society, but it had not always been that way for him. Okonkwo?s father, Unoka, had been a lazy man who would rather play his flute than take care of his crops. Unoka was said to be a charming man, and was able to borrow large amounts of money from his friends, but was never able to pay it back. As a result, Okonkwo has grown up very poor and ashamed of his lazy father. At one point in the book, Okonkwo remembers hearing one of his playmates calling his father an ?agbala,? which was the word for woman, but all described a man who had taken not titles (13). Okonkwo never forgets this, and actually develops a deep-seated fear that people will think that he is weak like his father. As I mentioned, Okonkwo became very well known, and his wealth and prestige rested solely on his own personal achievements. Okonkwo had received no inheritance from his poor father, no land and no money. As a young man, Okonkwo had been very successful wrestler, and as he grew older he became a well-known warrior. He was said to have brought home five human heads, which was a great achievement even for men who were much older that he was. At the beginning of the story, Okonkwo had obtained two titles, and had the respect of every man from all nine villages of Umuofia. Symbols of his wealth and prestige were his family and his compound. As I mentioned earlier, Okonwo had received no inheritance, and at the time of this story Okonkwo is still fairly young, and the fact that he had three wives, several children, and a very productive piece of land showed that Okonkwo was a very diligent worker. ?Okonkwo ruled his household with a heavy hand. His wives, especially...
In these few chapters that we read, we have already learned a lot about Okonkwo, his life, and how he shows sympathy to some, but to others he is heartless. Okonkwo is other wise known as an unsympathetic person. Okonkwo is a clan leader of umuofia who holds many titles and is well known among his people. Okonkwo's daily life consists of tending to the three yam farms he has produced and to make numerous offerings to numerous gods and to help himself and his family. Okonkwo's personality is hard driven, since his father did not provide for him and his family Okonkwo had to start man hood early and this led him to be very successful in his adulthood, Okonkwo is an unsympathetic character who only shows sympathy rarely because he believes it's a sign of weakness Okonkwo's family relationships make him a sympathetic character because when his children show signs of manliness or do their jobs right he shows sympathy towards them. He is an unsympathetic character because whenever he get a little mad he has to take his anger out on something and that is usually vented by beating his wife's.
When Okonkwo wanted to do something, he did it. The fear of being fragile like his father was the origin of his impulsiveness. While his father was “lazy and improvident” (Achebe, Pg.4), Okonkwo was a “man of action, a man of war” (Achebe, Ch2.Pg.4). If he “could not get his words out quickly enough, he would use his fists.” (Achebe, Pg.4) He walked on the tip of his feet and he was ready to “pounce on somebody. And he did pounce on people quite often.” (Achebe, Pg.4). His entire life was based on trying to be the opposite of his father and he did so by trying to have different personalities. Such impetuousness shrouded him with improvidence as he was quite incapable of thinking about the consequences of his actions. For an instance, he walked aimlessly around the compound in “suppressed anger, [and he] suddenly found an outlet.” (Achebe, Pg.34)Outraged, he beat his young wife and left the children crying, only to come back again – this time with a gun- and nearly killed her! On another occasion during the Week of Peace, his impulsive rage led him to beat his wife heavily. In his anger, he forgot that it was the Week of Peace, but “Okonkwo was not the man to stop beating somebody half-way through, not even for …a goddess.” (Achebe, Pg.26) Notice that his impulsive rage of manliness was more important that his beliefs. Okonkwo lacked the skill to think before acting and this will l...
He was a very cold man with little feelings but always showed the utmost respect and class to the other members of his tribe. He had a bit of trouble with listening to the words of wise men but always tried to make up for it. Okonkwo never showed empathy towards his children or wives. His most common emotion towards them was anger or disappointment. This was only on the outside though. Deep down he was very proud of some of the thing his children accomplished and often favored his daughter, Enzima. For the other member of the tribe, he was seen as fearless and
From an early age, Okonkwo was ashamed of his father, Unoka, who was unable even to feed his family. The unpredictability of receiving enough food at a young age was enough to inspire fear and embarrassment in Okonkwo who associated this embarrassment with his father and was given further justification for these feelings when he went out into Umuofia, discovering that the other villagers held similar opinions of Unoka. When he was old enough, Okonkwo began farming his own yams because “he had to support his mother and two sisters […] And supporting his mother also meant supporting his father” (25). Okonkwo’s self-reliance was admired, valued in the community where “age was respected […] but achievement was revered” (12); this admiration gave him feelings of security, and the respect of his peers pushed him towards greater self-respect, distancing him from his father. The security and respect became related in his mind as he viewed his acceptance in the community as his life’s goal and Okonk...
Okonkwo is a self-made man. He achieves greatness through his own hard work and determination. Okonkwo started his life without the benefits that other young men had. His father, Unoka, was a lazy man. He had acquired no honorary titles. When Unoka died, Okonkwo did not inherit any barn, title, or young wife. He merely acquired his father’s debts. Therefore, Okonkwo sets about to make a name for himself and to achieve greatness in his community. He diligently plants and harvests his yams, building a farm from scratch. He builds a large commune for his family. He marries three wives; one of them was the village beauty. He acquires two titles. Okonkwo is not a failure, like is father was. In Umuofia, “achievement was revered”, and Okonkwo’s achievement was immense (8). He was “clearly cut out for great things” (8). To the Igbo people, Okonkwo epitomizes greatness and success.
Throughout the tale, the narrator’s voice indicates that they are proud, understanding, and sympathetic towards Okonkwo. This is evident when the narrator explicitly comments on Okonkwo’s shame with his father, a man who wasn’t seen as man enough to his son. "When Unoka died he had taken no title at all and he was heavily in debt. Any wonder then that his son Okonkwo was ashamed of him?" (Achebe, pg. 3).
In Achebe’s book, Okonkwo would be viewed as a very intolerant person as he comes quick to anger and the slightest misdemeanor could lead to a harsh beating. Okwonko showcases this when one of his wives show up late to make his afternoon meal and “when she returned he beat her very heavily” (Achebe 29). Okonkwo later continues to show examples time and time again of how harsh his character truly is. For the boy, however, instead of anger consuming him, he worries. He thought about his father and worried that he would be too tired to play catch with him under the trees, he worried about his room being taken over by large messy people, and he worried about his father returning bald (Otsuka 549). He continues to worry about multiple things later on in the story, showing the side of his character that is very worrisome in a stressful time. Both characters have some sort of way to vent out their stress, but it’s really doing them more harm than good. The cause of this stress leads back to unwanted change, the change of meal time for Okonkwo and the change of how different life is for the boy without his
This idea is epitomized through Okonkwo - whose status as “one of the greatest men”, mirrors the prowess of the Igbo culture -, who, by a tragic turn of events is forced to kill his adopted son, Ikemefuna, in fear of “being thought weak.” From thereon, Okonkwo’s tale of woe progressively descends into melancholy, ultimately culminating in his death. The continuously tragic progression of events for Okonkwo, is symbolic for the decline of the Umuofia, as like Okonkwo, it reached the peak of its greatness, after which its circumstances continuously declined, ultimately concluding in its demise.
He gained respect solely from being a warrior and defeating an undefeated wrestler known as “Amalinze the Cat”. All he wants to make certain is him being seen as a man with both strength and pride, along with no correspondences of his father (Unoka). Similar to Goneril, Okonkwo also doesn’t have a good relationship with his father. In fact, he actually disgusts his father due to the simple fact that he was lazy, a coward, and extremely feminine. This is evident when Achebe states: “In his day he was lazy and improvident and was quite incapable of thinking about tomorrow” (Achebe, 3). His father also borrowed money several times from others and left debts when he died, “Unoka was, of course, a debtor, and he owed every neighbour some money” (Achebe, 3). Due to Unoka’s failures, Okonkwo had to suffer to ensure he wasn’t following his father’s footsteps, although, that caused him to make some rash decisions which effected his
Okonkwo is irrational and very abusive towards his wives. For instance, when his wife does not bring him his meal because she is at a friend’s house, Okonkwo beats her heavily despite his other wives’ protests that it is the week of peace. Because of this Okonkwo is shamed and punished because during the week of peace everyone must refrain from violence. Okonkwo still protests and tries to defend his actions, but all the other clansmen agree that what he did was harsh and unnecessary. This shows that the clansmen think Okonkwo uses violence in situations where it is not needed. Okonkwo is also sometimes harsh to his male counterparts. For instance, when Osugo disagrees with Okonkwo during a meeting, Okonkwo says, “‘This meeting is for men.’ The man who had contradicted him had no titles. That was why he called him a woman” (Achebe 26). Okonkwo attacked a Osugo’s masculinity and pride because he disagreed with him. This shows how cruel Okonkwo is. It also shows that he believes a man without titles isn’t a man. This belief stems from his fear of becoming like his father Unoka, who had no titles and who is Okonkwo’s greatest shame. Okonkwo thinks that rejecting those similar to his father makes him more of a man, but his harshness is criticized by his clansmen. For instance, “Everybody at the kindred meeting took sides with Osugo when Okonkwo called him a woman” (Achebe 26). This shows the clansmen's ideas of manliness differs from Okonkwo’s. It also shows that the Igbo people still respect men without titles, since they took Osugo’s side over Okonkwo’s. This point of view differs drastically from Okonkwo’s. Overall, Okonkwo uses violence and harshness to appear masculine, but he often takes it too
Though Okonkwo is a respected leader in the Umuofia ethnic group of the Igbo people, he lives in fear of becoming his father – a man known for his laziness and cowardice. He views his father named Unoka as effeminate so he rejects everything his father believed in or stood for. He was ashamed of his father since childhood. His father was a talented musician and gentle with people. His father brought shame to his family because of his irresponsibleness and falling into debts. He was not suited to the chauvinistic standards of the ethnic group. Okonkwo’s behavior is a result of his determination to be unlike his father. He is productive, wealthy, brave, violent, and is opposed to music. Okonkwo becomes well known as a wrestler and farmer. Okonkwo traits led him to achieve greatness financially and socially. He marries three women and has several children. He works hard to provide for his family because he did not have that growing up. He ends up adopting Ikemefuna from another village and raising him like a son. Okonokwo actually treated Ikemefuna better than his biological son. Okonokwo thought that his adoptive son had a lot of potential. The elders ordered to be killed Ikemefuna after three years with Okon...