In Africa, body modification is a sign of prosperity, wealth, power, and even is a way to show a person’s life story. The art form has been used for centuries and holds massive amounts of cultural significance for African tribes. The village of Umuofia in the novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe is no exception. The Igbo use tattooing as a way of reflecting the character and life experiences of a person in a way that is visible to the people around them. In the novel, Okonkwo was the epitome of manliness because of his athletic prowess and his position of power within the clan, emphasized on page 26 of Achebe’s work, “ “He was talking about Okonkwo, who had risen so suddenly from great poverty and misfortune to be one of the lords of
the clan”. He was a leader whom people respected and he worked to uphold the law. As such, a tattoo made up of the symbols for leadership, law and charisma represents manliness. Speaking of symbols, those for sanctity, security, and valor do not have much in common on the surface. However, together they represent the Igbo tribe and their view on war. The Igbo people found war honorable because people showed valor and bravery and their way of life was protected. Okonkwo clearly shared the common view in this quote from the novel, “...he was not afraid of war. He was a man of action, a man of war. Unlike his father he could stand the look of blood” (Achebe 10). Okonkwo had a rocky relationship with his wives in Things Fall Apart. Culturally, everything he did was acceptable, but sometimes his wives appeared resentful of their treatment. Nevertheless, they remained with Okonkwo and typically kept a positive outlook even when he was in a negative mood. As a result, the wives showed mercy, patience, and especially traditional femininity. Thus, the three symbols for those traits combine to express a women’s relationship towards marriage. Another important facet of Igbo culture is religion. Okonkwo, a leader of the village, left in exile after offending the earth goddess, shown on page 124 of Achebe’s novel, “The only course open to Okonkwo was to flee from the clan. It was a crime against the earth goddess to kill a clansman, and a man who committed it must flee from the land”. He is at risk of mortality in this situation, but hopes for steadfastness in his decision and reconciliation with the gods. Consequently, combining the physical representations of the demonstrated traits is what makes a tattoo revealing the Igbos attachment to customs. Additionally, a tattoo also representing religion made with the symbols for guardianship, the presence of gods, and trust is poignant when remembering the people of Mbanta’s first reaction to European missionaries. “When this was interpreted to the men of Mbanta they broke into derisive laughter. These men must be mad, they said to themselves. How else could they say that Ani and Amadiora were harmless” (Achebe 146)? Even in the face of change, the Igbo held on to their religion and kept faith in their gods. Similarly, when the stories of Europeans were being passed from village to village, relations with them were treated with wariness shown on page 140 of Achebe’s novel, “‘Never kill a man who says nothing. Those men of Abame were fools’”. Later however, Okonkwo experienced jealousy of the complete control the Europeans had of his old village. A tattoo combining jealousy, relations, and wariness accurately depicts the reaction of the Igbo to the Europeans
Okonkwo, a fierce warrior, remains unchanged in his unrelenting quest to solely sustain the culture of his tribe in the time of religious war in Achebe's book, Things Fall Apart. He endures traumatic experiences of conflict from other tribes, dramatic confrontations from within his own family, and betrayal by his own tribe.
In the paragraph on page 94 near the bottom, Achebe reveals the desperation that Okonkwo has fallen into because of his banishment. Okonkwo up to this point in the book has proven to be warrior-like in his approach to all things in life, but now we see that he has lost the battle of achieving the greatness, leaving him with a broken spirit.
As an overly proud clan leader who is keen on keeping his family’s name pristine, Okonkwo is a man prone to rash decisions resulting in failed judgement calls and violence. Although Okonkwo’s primary concern is to avoid being like his failure of a father Unoka, actively avoiding one’s fate by exploiting power can lead to their downfall. Achebe uses Okonkwo’s anger-fuelled violence to illustrate that failing to accept your fate a leads to demise, additionally giving Achebe’s representation of violence a prophetic meaning. As Okonkwo’s acts of violence and their resulting consequences grow, he eventually loses capability of decision making, providing a crescendo toward the conclusion
The protagonists of this novel, Okonkwo, is an especially masculine leader in the Indu tribe in Nigeria. The novel starts off with some background information that Okonkwo was forced into independence at a very young age, mentally isolating him from other children and his family. Okonkwo reflects, "I began to fend for myself at an age when most people still suck at their mothers’ breasts." (Achebe, 9). Immediately this statement causes great sympathy for Okonkwo because of his parents terrible nurturing skills, as well as the lack of childhood that Okonkwo got to experience. Not only does it cause sympathetic feelings, but it also allows the reader to see Okonkwo's heroic qualities that he acquired at such a young age. Similarly to Winterson, Okonkwo put in effort to remove himself from the isolation that his family forced him into as well as making the reader feel compassionate towards
The relationship of Okonkwo to his Igbo society in Achebe's Things Fall Apart was one of pure being. Okonkwo displayed the finest examples of human qualities of what it took to be an Igbo man. Okonkwo strives to be strong, masculine, industrious, respected, and wealthy. This was Okonkwo's inner struggle to be as different from his father as possible, who he believed to have been weak, effeminate, lazy, shameful, disgraceful, and poor. Okonkwo achieves great social and financial success by embracing these ideals. He marries three wives and fathers several children. He has a farm with a barn full of yams, his obi, and a hut for each wife. He was also a well respected clansman. Nevertheless, Okonkwo would find that he was unable to adapt to the changing times as the white man came to live among his people. It was this unwillingness, stubbornness, to change from his Umuofia upbringing and his ambitious and fiery demeanor that eventually brought about Okonkwo's undoing.
He has a masculine demeanor that sets him apart from the other men in the tribe. For example, Achebe wrote, “ Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond. His fame rested on solid personal achievements” (Page 3). Despite conflict, Okonkwo grew up to be a noble member of society. The traits Okonkwo possesses have largely attributed to his perspective of home.
In Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Ibo proverbs reveal Okonkwo’s character, especially his ambition, self-reliance, and respect for elders.
]k Adegbite O. came to a similar conclusion about Okonkwo’s views on masculinity and femininity when he makes the remark in his essay that, “Okonkwo is of the opinion that traditional men have lost their place in society and cannot be termed ‘worthy’ anymore as Western culture has softened their resolve; men have been turned to weaklings by colonisation and the white man’s religion” (Tobalase, “Masculinity and Cultural Conflict in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart”).
While in his prime, Okonkwo is one of the leaders of the Igbo community of Umuofia. Mr. Achebe describes Okonkwo right in the first line of the novel. “Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond”. (Achebe 1) Right away we learn that Okonkwo is a very well
Before the arrival of the Europeans, Achebe did a excellent job portraying how the life of Igbo was before they were forced to oppose their own culture. To support this theme, Achebe included detailed descriptions of social rituals within each family, the justice system, religious practices and consequences, preparation and indulgence of food, the marriage process and the distributing of power within the men. Achebe shows how every man has an opportunity to prove himself worthy to achieve a title on the highest level, based merely on his own efforts. One may argue that the novel was written with the main focus on the study of Okonkwo’s character and how he deteriorates, but without the theme that define the Igbo culture itself, we would never know the universe qualities of the society that shaped Okonkwo’s life. The lives of the Igbo people was no different to the actual lives of the Ibos people back in the early days of Africa. Just like in Things Fall Apart, in actual African tribes there was never a ruler. “Very interesting thing about these villages is that there is no single ruler or king that controls the population. Decisions are made by including almost everyone in the village” (AfricaGuide). Using the theme, Achebe educated readers on by mirroring real African life in her
Chinua Achebe challenges the social expectations of men through the protagonist Okonkwo. n the opening of the novel, readers learn of Okwonko's strength as "the older men agreed it was one of the fiercest since the founder of their town engaged a spirit of the wild for seven days and seven nights," which immediately draws readers into a world of competition. However Okwonko's status in the community was not only a result of his wrestling ability, but also because he "had risen so suddenly from great poverty and misfortune to be one of the lords of his clan." Okwonko is haunted by his father Unoka, who died a man with many debts. He grew up knowing the clan thought his father was a failure because of his soft and happy nature, and the pain fused to his spirit as "his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness," but not just any fear for "it was deeper and more intimate than the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw."
Okonkwo is a man who uses violence to prove he is a man to the igbo men and he starts to be controlled with violence. But by noticing how violence changed his relationship with his family. The great thing about “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe is that he presented Okonkwo as a hard-working man and a loving person. But most of Okonkwo success is tied to the fact that he doesn't want to turn out like his father.
Okonkwo sees his father’s gentleness as a feminine trait. He works hard to be as masculine as possible so that he will be the opposite of his father and overcome the shame his father brought to his family. Okonkwo deals with this struggle throughout the entire book, hiding the intense fear of weakness behind a masculine façade (Nnoromele 149). In order to appear masculine, he is often violent. In his desire to be judged by his own worth and not by the worth of his effeminate father, Okonkwo participates in the killing of a boy he sees as a son, even though his friends and other respected tribe members advise him against it. (Hoegberg 71). Even after the killing of Ikamefuna, Okonkwo hides his feelings of sadness because the emotions are feminine to him. He goes so far as to ask himself, “when did you become a shivering old woman” (Achebe 65), while he is inwardly grieving. The dramatic irony of the secret fears that Okonkwo has will open the reader’s eyes to how important gender identity is to him. This theme is also presented among Okonkwo’s children. He sees his oldest son, Nwoye, as feminine because he does not like to work as hard as his father (Stratton 29). When Nwoye eventually joins the Christian church, Okonkwo sees him as even more feminine. On the other hand, Okonkwo’s
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.
The author Chinua Achebe, in the novel, “Things Fall Apart,” shares the extreme diversity between the female and male characters residing in Umofia. Okonkwo, the male leader of the tribe, carries qualities such as power and manliness, as all men are expected to. As for the females they are commonly referred as being weaker for child bearing and more responsible because they are expected to cook, clean, and take care of their children. Although the traits of the Igbo culture vary in the determination of the sexes, both genders share both positive and negative aspects of their community.