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How do families influence the development of an individual
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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
Okonkwo’s first and most distinctive flaw is his fear of failure. Many people would agree that this flaw is driven by the fear of becoming his father, but Okonkwo takes this fear too far. Okonkwo’s father, Unoka, was known for being a very lazy and carefree man. He also had notoriety of being “…poor and his wife and children had barely enough to eat.” (Achebe 5). A big tradition in Umuofia is having a father who is supposed to teach his children right and wrong. In Okonkwo’s case, these lessons had to be self-taught. Okonkwo had to commit to his own understandings of what defined a “good man” and to him that was the exact opposite of his father. Because of his fear to be seen as weak, Okonkwo even murders a child that calls him father. Ikemefuna was sent to live with Okonkwo because someone was murdered in a nearby village. An example of Okonkwo’s ill-hearted actions are shown in the following quote: “As the man drew up and raised his machete, Okonkwo looked away. He heard the blow. He heard Ikemefuna cry, ‘My father, they have killed me!’ as he ran towards him. Dazed with fear, Okonkwo drew his machete and cut him down. He was afraid of being thought weak.” (Achebe 61). The fact that he kills Ikemefuna shows that his reputation is more important than the life of a child. Okonkwo’s fear permits him to receive more respect from his tribe, but only because it inclines him to do better than anyone else.
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 ...
a barn or title). His father later went to consult Agbala about his bad harvest, but finds out that he can only blame himself for this. He later develops a disease that makes his stomach swell which he later dies from. Okonkwo wanted a better life for himself and went to a wealthy man named Nwakibie. Nwakibie gives Okonkwo a generous amount of seeds because he is a hard worker. With those seeds he had to support his family instead of his future. The rest of the year ends up being terrible (heavy rain, trees uprooted, no sunlight, yams didn’t turn out).
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 is not all that he may seem; as there is more than what meets the eye. Okonkwo is the primary protagonist within the book Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Okonkwo is a cruel yet kind man who has everything yet has nothing, which in turn creates a sympathetic character. A character such as Okonkwo has many facets; or masks if you will. Then we have his many influences: the Ibo culture; his father Unoka and of course his own personality. Then there is a staggering list of achievements. Okonkwo is a strong character but thinks only inwardly - especially towards his father - which will be discussed further in this essay.
Okonkwo cannot control himself when one of his wives or kids does something that makes him frustrated, he either beats them or punishes them in another way, “His first two wives ran out in great alarm pleading with him that it was the sacred week. But Okonkwo was not the man to stop beating somebody half-way through, not even for fear of a goddess” (Achebe 4). Okonkwo has tried to influence his son in positive ways but already sees that Nwoye is already...
When he went out into Umuofia, he found that the villagers had very similar opinions towards his father. As soon as he was old enough, Okonkwo began farming yams because “he had to support his mother and two sisters [.] And supporting his mother also meant supporting his father” (25). He received admiration from many people for this, and he turned the admiration into a feeling of security, knowing that the people of Umuofia did not think the same of him as they did his father. He began to respect himself a lot, and felt that it was appropriate to distance himself from Unoka.
However, the main character Okonkwo did not have the opportunity to feel what it was like to have something without having to work for it. His father was a very poor man and had nothing to give him, this made Okonkwo a more independent person and decided to make his own farm and grow his own crops. He did this by begging other farmers for yam seeds, he then grew up and decided to give his eldest son his farm, as the tradition would
“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 lack of father figure leads him to the perspective of fear of failure and weakness this is what he is driven by because in his life he doesn’t have a role model that he can look up to in order to overcome that fear or that adaption to the new society. Okonkwo’s biggest obstacles throughout this story is fear, lack of self worthiness, and culture values.
For example, in the case of boys, Okonkwo attempts to teach his son, Nwoye, as well as Ikemefuna how to prepare seed-yams, and feels as if “one could not begin too early” since yams stand for “manliness” and that “he who could feed his family on yams from one gravest to another was a very great man indeed” which is then emphasized by the statement that “Okonkwo wanted his son to be a great farmer and a great man” and, if need be, he “would stamp out the disquieting signs of laziness which he thought he already saw in him” (Achebe 21). Okonkwo’s inner thoughts about his son, in particular, demonstrates how strongly men are judged by their ability to provide for their families, and that providing for their families well directly corresponds with being a hardworking and respectable man, and that these values are emphasized at a young age in order to encourage this ideal
Nwoye and Okonkwo relation is complex having many different stages but just like Okonkwo and his father it become pieces. Nwoye and Okonkwo relation at the beginning was ruled by fear;Okonkwo had little to no problem using violence to reprimand his son to do work when he(Okonkwo) thought his son was being lazy. Leaving Nwoye feeling like a sad faced youth as he doesn’t know how to make his father happy since Okonkwo was a strong man that didn’t appear feminine. ”Okonkwo’s first son, Nwoye, was then twelve years old, but was already causing his father great anxiety for his incipient Laziness. At any rate, that was how
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.
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,