Examples Of Sacrifice In Things Fall Apart

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In Achebe’s Novel Things Fall Apart one of the themes is that striving after titles, trophies, and status in general is rife with sacrifice – some too great to overcome. The status symbols in the novel and in the modern world are often sought after heavily. This leads to great strife amongst people and causes damage in multiple ways. One of the ways that striving for status makes one sacrifice, is that of their own personality, instead of being themselves, they feel as though they need to act a certain way to gain status. It can also cause people to sacrifice relationships to maintain their version of status and the way they perceive others think of them. Lastly, it can cause people to sacrifice their morality to achieve their goals of fame …show more content…

In the novel, this is extremely evident in the relationship between Okonkwo and his father, Unoka as mentioned before, never achieved success in his life which caused a rift between him and his child. Okonkwo destroyed the relationship between him and his father so that he could move up on the social ladder, and in the end was annoyed when Unoka tried to connect in his dying days. Another example is that of Ikemefuna, though Okonkwo had no ability to change what happened he did not need to participate. However, he wanted to be seen as strong, and unmoving so he killed a boy that he saw as a son. In the modern world this is another idea that fits perfectly into the High School social structure. When people get to high school or even middle school they have friends, but when they want to fit in somewhere else they decide their friends aren’t cool, and they leave them in the dust in favor of new superficial kinship with people they most likely don’t even like. When one's life is based entirely on where they fit into the social structure, they never form true relationships that bring them real happiness or

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