Everyone in the past, present, and future strive for success. People of all ages and generations aspire to be successful in one way or another. One of the most prominent ways to define success is having lots of money and lots of respect. The desire for money and titles can tear a life apart. In, Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe, Okonkwo’s desire for status is a negative force that is ruling his life. 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 …show more content…
Money is highly regarded in both Okonkwo’s time and today’s world. Okonkwo reveals his thoughts on money early in the novel. This is exemplified in Okonkwo’s thoughts of his father after his death. Okonkwo’s father died heavily in debt and, “Okonkwo was ashamed of him”(8). The main reason Okonkwo is ashamed of his father is because he died a poor man, heavily in debt. Okonkwo uses the amount of money someone has as a determiner of how successful that person is. Okonkwo tries to use his money to impress others many times throughout the novel. One of these times is in his return to the village after a seven year exile. Okonkwo was planning his return and decided that he, “would show his wealth by initiating his sons into the Ozo society”(171). Okonkwo wanted to initiate his sons into a very affluent society, in an audacious attempt to flaunt his wealth to the villagers. The driving force behind Okonkwo’s decision to do this is the fact the he wants to make sure that the whole village knows how rich he is. Many people in today’s world have the exact same problem that curses Okonkwo; a strong desire for money. While a desire for wealth can be healthy, it can also be destructive; as it is in Okonkwo’s case. Even though there have been many people who have struggled with this problem, people do not seem to learn from their mistakes. Things Fall Apart, by Chinua
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.
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.
One example of how the Igbo culture molds the fictional character Okonkwo into who he is is by the usage of the title system. The title system fuels Okonkwo’s hatred for his father, Unoka, and the fear of being like him in any way. Throughout Things Fall Apart, Unoka is constantly shamed for his lack of titles, which, in turn, causes Okonkwo to begrudge his father. On page thirteen it states, “Even as a little boy he had resented his father’s failure and weakness, and even now he still remembered how he had suffered when a playmate had told him that his father was agbala. That was how Okonkwo first came to know that agbala was not only another name for a woman, it could also mean a man who had taken no title” (Achebe). This quote illustrates how significant the amount of hatred that Okonkwo has for
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. As a child Okonkwo was neglected by his father and even later in his life did not speak with him until of course his father was on his deathbed, this made him very angry. Okonkwo always saw his father Unoka as lazy. Okonkwo worked hard to remove any trace of laziness from his personality.
Abame, a village almost identical to Umuofia, had recently been wiped out by the strange visit of white men. The area in which this story takes place has never seen these albino people, and most of the villages didn’t believe the stories that these men exist. After the first arrival of a white man, Abame consulted the Oracle, who in return, foretold the demise of the clan if they were to let him free. As a result, Abame killed the intruder, and laid the matter to rest. However, even after many market weeks, their precaution led to the anger of the man’s party. On a popular market day the white men attacked and murdered the entire village, and only a small band of refugees were able to survive. When hearing of the innocent slaughter of the tribe, Uchendu tells the story of Mother Kite and her daughter, who are
The relationship between the rich and the poor in the traditional Igbo society as represented by Okonkwo and his father, Unoka were represented by considering a man 's wealth is partially measured by the number of wives he has. A wealthy man described in Things Fall Apart, has nine wives and thirty children. Okonkwo
In Chinua Achebe’s famous novel, Things Fall Apart, the protagonist, Okonkwo, is proof of Aristotle’s statement. Although he is conceivably the most dominant man in Umuofia, his personal faults, which are fear of failure and uncontrollable anger, do not allow him true greatness as a human being. There are many reasons as to why this is true. One major reason is, because of his many flaws, it causes Okonkwo to lose track of his path in life. Another reason is because he is portrayed as a negative character. These are just a few of the many reasons as to why Okonkwo is considered a tragic hero by many.
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...
One of the most commonly asked questions about the novel Things Fall Apart is: why did Achebe choose a tragic hero, Okonkwo, as the main character in the story. According to Nnoromele, “A hero, in the Igbo cultural belief system, is one with great courage and strength to work against destabilizing forces of his community, someone who affects, in a special way, the destinies of others by pursuing his own. He is a man noted for special achievements. His life is defined by ambivalence, because his actions must stand in sharp contrast to ordinary behavior”(Nnoromele). In my opinion, he chose this type of hero to show the correlation between Okonkwo’s rise and fall in the Igbo society to the rise and fall of the Igbo culture itself. Many commentators have come up with various reasons for Okonkwo’s failure in the novel. Some say that it is just his chi that causes him to be a failure; however others believe it is because he is incapable of dealing with his culture deteriorating before his eyes. In Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo’s character as a tragic hero is a result of his chi, inability to cope with the destruction of the Igbo culture, and ultimately, his own suicide.
In Things fall Apart, labels and titles signify power, and where you stand as a person, or leader. Okonkwo really values his position in his tribe and in society, and the titles he has rightfully earned, unlike his father. Okonkwo feels hatred, anger, and embarrassment towards his father Unoka, who was referred to as "Agbala," a title used for women as well as men that have not taken any title. Okonkwos' fathers failure is what truly drives him to be as powerful and as respected as possible, and with this power comes many respectable titles and honors. With three wives and many children, Okonkwo earns great titles and also great respect, he is recognized as a powerful and wealthy man who worked hard to transform himself from a man with nothing to a man with everything; wealth, power, respect, yams, wives, children, everything that is valued in Umuofian tribe.
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 portrayed as a respected individual in many ways. He was a well known person through out the 9 villages and beyond. His successes were based wholly on his personal achievements. For example, he was a warrior and wrestler who gained respect through his athletics. Manliness was a characteristic that was greatly valued by the people of the village. Since Okonkwo was a wrestler and a warrior this showed that he was a fierce fear-free individual. And because he hadn't lost one fight or any battles this was more reason for the people of the village to love him. He was also respected because of his wealth. Okonkwo had three wives and m...
Although the reader feels remorseful for Okonkwo’s tragic childhood life. It is another reason to sympathize with a man who believes he is powerful and respected by many when in reality, he is feared by his own family and that is another reason that leads Okonkwo to his downfall. He started positive, motivated but down the line, Okonkwo treats his wife and children very harshly. When the author mentioned, “Okonkwo ruled his household with a heavy hand. His wives, especially the youngest, lived in perpetual fear of his fiery temper, and so did his little children” (pg.13).
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.
Chinua Achebe's novel, Things Fall Apart, uses the changes in African tribal culture brought about by European colonization to illustrate the evolution of the character Okonkwo. As Okonkwo leads his life, his experiences, personality and thought are revealed to the reader. The obstacles he faces in life are made numerous as time progresses. Okonkwo's most significant challenge originates within himself. He also encounters problems not only when in opposition to the white culture, but in his own culture, as he becomes frustrated with tribal ideals that conflict with his own. The last adversary he encounters is of the physical world, brought upon himself by his emotional and cultural problems. The manner through which Okonkwo addresses his adversaries in Things Fall Apart creates the mechanism that leads to his eventual destruction.