What drives one to suicide? Mental illnesses, traumatic experiences, social isolation, and medical disorders are some of the reasons why one may kill himself. In Chinua Achebe’s, Things Fall Apart, the main character, Okonkwo, is driven to suicide. We don’t know his motive for it but one can take guesses at what it might be. To start, Okonkwo was a man highly revered by the people of his clan, the Ibo. He was hardworking, distant from all emotions except anger, and a very respectable man. His life was great but then it all started to collapse. After the accidental shooting of a dead respected man’s son he is forced to move to his mother’s village. During his absence, the European Christians start to settle in Umuofia and convert people to Christianity. …show more content…
The Ibo were a very religious, ritualistic, and unchanging group of people. Most of everything that an Ibo knew came from the past and was based on something religious. They often consulted their various gods for answers or prayed to them for a good harvest. They also believed in chi which is what we would refer to as our soul. If your chi doesn’t agree with your actions then you should reconsider them.They derived many of their medicinal treatments from strange rituals that at some point in time worked for someone most likely out of pure coincidence. For example, if there is a mother that keeps giving birth but none of her children stay alive, it is the work of an ogbanje, an evil spirit. The treatments involved living with her mother in another village, or having intercourse in the father’s hut instead of the mothers. When a child is finally alive long enough to speak and walk, it os asked where a small stone buried in the ground is. This stone apparently represents the spirit’s connection to the mortal world. Once it is destroyed the spirit is gone and the family can rest easy. Traditions like these never changed in the long time the tribe had been around for. They never changed laws, never questioned their gods, and always handled conflicts in the same way. The Europeans may have been a good thing for them in the ways of becoming more technologically advanced but in the long run just gave the tribes more advanced …show more content…
He was a very cold man with little feelings but always showed the utmost respect and class to the other members of his tribe. He had a bit of trouble with listening to the words of wise men but always tried to make up for it. Okonkwo never showed empathy towards his children or wives. His most common emotion towards them was anger or disappointment. This was only on the outside though. Deep down he was very proud of some of the thing his children accomplished and often favored his daughter, Enzima. For the other member of the tribe, he was seen as fearless and
Okonkwo is a man of action, he would rather settle things with his strength rather than talk it out with the person he is mad at. This is very unsympathetic because not only is he going to use violence towards others, he is doing it just because he can not get his point across with using his words. This quote shows that he does not care towards others emotions because he would rather just fight them than talk it out. Another quote that shows Okonkwo’s unsympathetic behavior is,“He rules the household with a heavy hand” (Achebe 13). Okonkwo is shown to be someone who disciplines where he sees fit, if he does not like what is going on then there might be a high chance that the heavy hand is going to come down onto you. It shows how unsympathetic Okonkwo is because it shows how he might not care about his family’s feelings towards getting hit when they disobey him. His wives are more often beaten, especially Ekwefi, who has been beaten almost to death because Okonkwo was in a bad mood. It shows that he lets his emotions get the best of him and he does not control them very well, he would rather let it all out violently than talking it out with the people that he is mad at. Those quotes show how Okonkwo can be seen as a very unsympathetic person from his
From birth Okonkwo had wanted his son, Nwoye, to be a great warrior like him. His son instead rebelled and wanted to be nothing like Okonkwo. Okonkwo would not change so that his son would idolize him, as he had wanted since his son's birth. He chose not to acknowledge his son's existence instead. This would weigh heavily on anyone's conscience, yet Okonkwo does not let his relationship with his son affect him in the least bit.
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.
The Ibo tribes are interesting and have had a good history outside the fact that they were taken over by the British. The Ibo people were very religious and believed in many gods. They also believed in a thing called chi. "At the most one could say that his chi or personal god was good."(29). The Ibo people believe your chi was like your spirit and could determine whether you had good or bad fortune. Some people may see chi as luck or karma. The Ibo people also viewed masculinity very highly. The men would wrestle each other for respect within the tribe and the males were considered superior to the females in the fact that the males were stronger and tougher. Males in the tribes may also take more than one wife. This is known as bigamy. "There is no civil ordinance law against anyone who takes more than one wife (bigamy) as long as the person can maintain them." This was looked down upon once Christianity came into their culture from the British missionaries. The Ibo have good hospitality and manners. When visitors arrive they present them with a Kola nut to eat and palm wine to drink. An overall view of these people would say that they are good natured people. They had their own language, religion, and ideas on how things worked in life.
He is an extremely persistent man and a hard worker. He is given seed yams and even when heavy rainfall causes the yams to rot he does not give up and he continues to try. He shows emotion inwardly and is extremely temperamental. As shown by the following quote, Okonkwo still favors boys over girls and men over women. This is because they do the “masculine” tasks.
(Achebe 205). Okonkwo killing the messenger and getting the wrong reaction showed him who the people of Umuofia were for and against. Achebe foreshadows Okonkwo’s suicide by having him walk away from the people. At this point Okonkwo felt he was fighting a battle on his own. Okonkwo's decision to commit suicide is not primarily based off of him killing the messenger, but because of the change that occurred in Umuofia during his exile and the effect it had on him once he returned.
Okonkwo is a character who strives to make his way in a world that he thinks values manliness. His greatest fear is becoming his father. He stands for everything portrayed as "manly". His father was a man of cowardly traits. He was poor and his main interest was music. Okonkwo labels his father as feminine. He associates masculinity with aggression. This is the main reason he tries to define himself as the manly man of society. He achieves great success in both social and financial perspectives. He marries three women and has a plentiful amount of children with each. He runs his household with fear. He frequently beats wives and even threatens to kill them. He is perceived as a powerful, wealthy and violent man. His whole outlook on the way he lives his life is based on being the opposite of his father. His experience with living with someone he was so ashamed of drives him to become a person of violence and authority. "But in spite of these disadvantages, he had begun even in his father's lifetime to lay the foundations of a prosperous future. It was slow and painful. But he threw himself into it like one possessed. And indeed he was possessed by the fear of his father's contemptible life and shameful death" (Achebe, 18). Okonkwo is consciously opposed to anything perceived as feminine or soft. He struggles to be as different from his deceased father as possible.
On one hand, Okonkwo is seen as a powerful, respected man, who is well known throughout his home village of Umuofia and beyond. He is a brave fearless warrior, who as a young man had brought great honour to his village by beating Amalinze, and who for seven years had not been beaten "from Umuofia to Mbaino". He is not a man to shy away from conflict or confrontation. He is not a particularly intelligent man, but a man of action, who is more likely to settle an argument through violence than negotiation. He has an impulsive, explosive nature which can often land him in trouble. By nature, he is energetic and hardworking, and has no patience with men that are idle. He is a pillar of the community, and is looked up to by the majority of his clan members for his success and prosperity in life.
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.
Okonkwo’s shame and fear of being seen as weak drove him to be a cruel leader in his tribe and a harsh ruler in his household. In describing this harshness, Achebe writes:
...side made him suffer. He did it to himself. If he wasn't so caught up on the idea that if you weren't violent and brave then you were a woman, perhaps he would still be alive at the end of the novel. He takes his own life because he realizes everything he has done to be that powerful leader he has always wanted to be was a waste. When he comes back from exile, everything is different. He realizes that the people in the village don't need him. They are content with change and adapting to a new way of life, unlike himself. They don't want to go to war and have bloody battles like he does. Okonkwo realized his village was able to survive without him. By Okonkwo taking his own life, he proved his misery and the idea of him being truly weak at heart was affirmed.
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...
Okonkwo was ashamed of him and did everything possible to never end up like his father. When the narrator stated, “With a father like Unoka, Okonkwo did not have the start in life which many young men had. But he threw himself into it like one possessed. And indeed he was possessed by the fear of his father’s contemptible life and shameful death” (pg. 18). The.
For an abundance of authors, the driving force that aids them in creation of a novel is the theme or number of themes implemented throughout the novel. Often times the author doesn’t consciously identify the theme they’re trying to present. Usually a theme is a concept, principle or belief that is significant to an author. Not only does the theme create the backbone of the story, but it also guides the author by controlling the events that happen in a story, what emotions are dispersed, what are the actions of characters, and what emotions are presented within each environment to engage the readers in many
The Ibo people had a very different religious lifestyle and culture. They believed in many gods; they were a polytheistic tribe. The Ibo supreme god was Chukwu, and the people believe "he made all the world and the other gods" (Achebe 179). They believed that everything has a spirit and that ancestral spirits called the "egwugwu" kept the law. The Ibo...