Theme Of Nwoye And Okonkwo

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When things fall apart they fall in pairs; Okonkwo and Unoka, Nwoye and Okonkwo. They are father and son yet they(sons) wanted to be nothing like each other. Both Nwoye and Okonkwo break their ties with their father believing their father ideology to be wrong and flawed. Both came to resent each other, as the sons refused to follow their father’s ways of life. As Okonkwo refused to become his father and Nwoye didn’t believe in his father’s belief.

In “Things Fall Apart” the opening chapter shows Okonkwo and his father, Unoka, relation. Unoka was a gentle, weak man, that could not stand the sight of blood making him a failure in the tribe as a man.“Unoka, the grown-up, was a failure.”(Achebe ,6).As he was thift man who always landed himself in debt. Okonkwo …show more content…

Okonkwo treated everything his father was, kindness and idleness as a weakness that lead to failure. “ Okonkwo was ruled by one passion-to hate everything that his father Unkoa had loved.One of those things was gentleness and another was idleness.”(Achebe,13) since he refused to grow up to be a failure. Okonkwo was a fierce warrior that ruled himself over his masculinity and anger unlike his father. He wanted to be as manly as possible but that lead him to have problems with his eldest son , Nwoye.

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

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