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Explain the characters of Okonkwo as portrayed in the novel " Things fall apart " by Chinua Achebe
The character of okonkwo in things fall apart by Chinua achebe
Explain the characters of Okonkwo as portrayed in the novel " Things fall apart " by Chinua Achebe
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Recommended: Explain the characters of Okonkwo as portrayed in the novel " Things fall apart " by Chinua Achebe
As the book opens, Umuofia is unafraid and powerful and Okonkwo the man with three wives was known as a majestic wrestler. Okonkwo’s father name is Unoka, but he is dead and before he died he was known to be a very lazy man. His son Okonkwo refuse to be like him so he tried to do the opposite of his father. Unoka owed neighbors very much money. Okonkwo desire for toughness, but his son Nwoye is very different from his dad he is lazy and Okonkwo don’t find that to be any good in his son life from what Okonkwo grew up from. Okonkwo wanted his son Nwoye to follow in his foot steps and find shelter and to provide for his family when he grow older. Then a couple of days after Nwoye sit at the table with his father. Okonkwo finds that
Okonkwo is on two ends of a stick. Sometimes he can be shown to be a caring, sympathetic character, but others he is shown as a ruthless person that is very unsympathetic person. Okonkwo is a man of action that would rather solve things with his fists rather than talking it out. He is a great wrestler hailing from the Umuofia clan that has thrown Amalinze the Cat. Okonkwo is also a very good farmer, where he has been able to grow two barns worth of yams. He is someone that doesn’t know how to control themselves when they get angry as he will then resort to violence. Okonkwo’s family relationships make him a sympathetic character because of his caregiving nature and hospitality and he is shown to be an unsympathetic character because of his
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.
“With a father like Unoka, Okonkwo did not have the start in life which many young men had. He neither inherited a barn nor a title, or even a young wife. But in spite of these disadvantages, he had begun even in his father’s lifetime to lay the foundations of a prosperous future” (18). Most of his accomplishments were despite his father, whom Okonkwo loathed, but with whom I connected. In the novel, I relate more to Okonkwo’s father, Unoka, a much more laid back character. Like Unoka, I am in love with life, lazy, not worried about tomorrow, and deeply in debt.
Okonkwo's downfall was predicted from the beginning. The book Thing Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe is about the great warrior Okonkwo who builds his life in the Igbo tribe from the ground up. After adopting a child named Ikemefuna, Okonkwo's life goes downhill. Many things in Okonkwo's life could have caused his own destruction, but there are a few things that could have been bigger than others. I think that Ikemefuna's death played a big part, as well as Nwoye's betrayal, and his father's failure.
A sense of foreboding envelops us from the first. We sense all will not end well for Umuofia. The chill of fear grips us as the world of Okonkwo and his clan truly falls apart. Okonkwo will need all of his power to fight the forces against his world, but tragically he is crippled by the most destructive malady of all, fear of himself. Achebe employs the form of classical Greek tragedy to tell his African tale of the rise and fall of Okonkwo.
Okonkwo is “a man of action, a man of war” (7) and a member of high status in the Igbo village. He holds the prominent position of village clansman due to the fact that he had “shown incredible prowess in two intertribal wars” (5). Okonkwo’s hard work had made him a “wealthy farmer” (5) and a recognized individual amongst the nine villages of Umuofia and beyond. Okonkwo’s tragic flaw isn’t that he was afraid of work, but rather his fear of weakness and failure which stems from his father’s, Unoka, unproductive life and disgraceful death. “Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and weakness….It was not external but lay deep within himself. It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father.” Okonkwo’s father was a lazy, carefree man whom had a reputation of being “poor and his wife and children had just barely enough to eat... they swore never to lend him any more money because he never paid back.” (5) Unoka had never taught Okonkwo what was right and wrong, and as a result Okonkwo had to interpret how to be a “good man”. Okonkwo’s self-interpretation leads him to conclude that a “good man” was someone who was the exact opposite of his father and therefore anything that his father did was weak and unnecessary.
Okonkwo’s downfall was definitely inevitable. Okonkwo spent a majority of his life building up his reputation and striving to hold a high standard in his clan. Unfortunately, as time went on Okonkwo made some mistakes that tarnished his reputation. For example, one event that began his downfall was when in chapter thirteen Okonkwo was banished from his clan for seven years after he accidently killed Ezeudu’s sixteen-year-old son. There is no way the incident could have been avoided because Okonkwo’s gun went off accidentally and nothing could have been done to prevent the tragedy. Another occurrence that led to his downfall was in chapter twenty-four when he killed one of the missionaries’ court messengers. In Okonkwo’s eyes, the missionaries
Thus, Okonkwo becomes a tragic hero, and at the end of the book, he takes his own life to end his pain. Okonkwo a man in disguise is a victim of wrong choices in life and dies for it as a noble purpose. Okonkwo is a human being and with that comes the result in fatal flaws that result in his downfall. High birth is not of Okonkwo’s back ground, but ultimately his actions affect Umuofia in more ways than he could ever understand. Okonkwo not only is a tragic hero, he is also a victim of his own fate and destiny.
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...
Both “Button, Button” by Richard Matheson and “Popular Mechanics” by Raymond Carver portray that a person with selfishness is only hurting themselves. In “Button, Button”, Norma and Arthur, an average couple living in New York, recieve a button on their doorstep. They are eventually told that if they press the button, they will receive $50,000 with only one catch, someone they did not know would die. Arthur completely disregarded this and would not even consider pressing the button, while Norma kept considering it because she wanted the money. Norma’s selfishness stems from the unhappiness she has with her current living situation, and makes her become impulsive, lose her morals, and ruin the relationship she had with Arthur. “Popular Mechanics”
McCandless is convinced that his relationship with nature is more profound and honest than that of his relationship with people. Krakauer deduces that McCandless’s decision to be a vagabond is due to the “threat of human intimacy, of friendship, and all the messy emotional baggage that comes with it” (Krakauer 55). McCandless’s fear of “human intimacy” and “friendship” unravel his true purpose of escaping civilization, which is to break away from burdening others by his imperfections. McCandless presumes that nature would provide him reassurance because it does not doubt his choices and require him to explain himself for any of his actions. Due to this misconception, McCandless has misled himself into thinking that he is refraining others from
This crime from Okonkwo left him away from his homeland for seven years, and during his escape, his old culture would soon be evolved. This unintentional action also played a domino effect, first moving his family away and having his home destroyed, then having his son, Nwoye turn back on him and become a missionary in Umuofia joining the white culture. Achebe describes how Nwoye declines Okonkwo being his father towards Obierika who is doing favors for the family (144). Hearing this, his father seems to not be harmed and is disappointed in his son. These missionaries began assembling into Umuofia, convincing the clansmen that there is only one God, and He is the creator of everything unlike what the clansmen had believed. They had a god for everything, but they now were being persuaded. Hearing this, Okonkwo is in shock and believes that the only way to solve the issue is to chase the men out of the village some way (Achebe 146). Nwoye is attracted to the new religion but has yet to reveal it to his father for fear of him. When Okonkwo heard the news, he is infuriated with anger. “… sprang to his feet and gripped him by the neck”
When the structure of Umuofia began to change, Okonkwo found himself incapable of adapting like the rest of the villagers. He was determined to live a life that could not survive the changing world, and his dreams crumbled. Throughout the novel, Achebe demonstrates that the lack of being able to adapt to change will leave you lost in society. Since his childhood, Okonkwo has always been ashamed of his father, Unoka. Unoka was rarely able to feed his children, which made Okonkwo scared and embarrassed.
The foundation of Okonkwo’s fear of failure and weakness stems from the qualities possessed by Okonkwo’s father, Unoka, and his inability to succeed during his life. As a young boy, Okonkwo had always known and resented that his father was essentially the definition of a failure. Throughout Okonkwo’s childhood, he was constantly reminded of the fact that his father was unsuccessful: “... even now he still remembered how he had suffered when a playmate had told him his father was agbala” (Achebe 13). The word agbala has two different meanings, one referring to a woman and the other meaning a man who has taken no titles in the clan. Titles are an important part of the Ibo culture because they show a man’s achievement and success in the clan.
Okonkwo embodies all the ideal and heroic traits of the Igbo culture. He is strong, authoritative, hardworking, and successful. The opening sentence states that “Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond” (3). Okonkwo is great and famous because of his “solid personal achievements” (3). Okonkwo first achieved fame and recognition when he became the village’s wrestling champion. At eighteen years of age, he had “brought honor to his village” by defeating the seven-year champion. By winning the wrestling match, Okonkwo demonstrates to his village his great strength and skill as a warrior. After that his fame spread “like a bush-fire in the harmattan” (3). Okonkwo governs his household with authority. He “ruled his household with a heavy hand” (13). His wives and children lived “in perpetual fear of his fiery temper” (13). Okonkwo is a hard task-master. He works on his farm “from cock-crow until the chickens went to roost” and compelled his family to do the same (13). He does not tolerate laziness in his sons. He punishes his son, Nwoye, with “constant nagging and beating” (14). Okonkwo is the sole and unquestionable authority figure in his household.