Adrian+hw+11-05-09

Adrian Grech Hon. English In his book __Things Fall Apart__, Chinua Achebe explores various aspects of human faults. One fault that is greatly explored is people having troubles with their family because they cannot stand up to their own fears; Okonkwo of Umuofia is one such character. Okonkwo, the main character of the story, is a man who lives in fear of what others think of him because they did not think well of his father. Therefore, he strives to hate everything his father liked and to be the complete opposite of his father, even if it means hiding affection from his own kids and causing a huge gap between him and them. Okonkwo’s fear of looking weak causes him to lose relations with his son. As mentioned before, Okonkwo’s father wasn’t well respected in the village. He was a musician and was lazy compared to the other men who would go into the forest to cut down tress while he played his flute. He was in huge debt and barely had enough money to support his family with enough to eat. Yet somehow, he always found a way to persuade people to lend him money. His father also hated war and violence. Okonkwo hated these aspects about his father and came to believe that he must do whatever it takes to be a “man”. The book says “his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness…It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father. 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 cane to know that //agbala// was not only a name for a woman, it could also mean a man who had taken no title. And so Okonkwo was ruled by one passion-to hate everything that his father Unoka had loved. One of those things was gentleness and another was idleness.” (13) This quote shows that Okonkwo was willing to do whatever it took to distinguish himself as being completely different from his father and manly; even if it meant hurting his children and even killing them. Okonkwo, in his quest to be “manly” and in self fear of becoming like his father, often ruins any chances he has to get to know some of his children. For example, when his first son, Nwoye, appears to be gentle and sort of lazy, Okonkwo is quick to judge and whips him heavily. Thus, Nwoye is very wary of his father. “His wives, especially the youngest, lived in perpetual fear of his fiery temper and so did his little children” (13) As Nwoye got older, his father wanted him to be a man even more and therefore “encouraged the boys to sit with him in his //obi//, and he told them stories of the land-masculine stories of violence and bloodshed. Nwoye knew that it was right to be masculine and violent, but somehow he still preferred the stories that his mother used to tell…stories of the tortoise and his wily ways… he knew that his father wanted him to be a man. And so he feigned that he no longer cared for women’s stories. And when he did this he saw that his father was pleased, and no longer rebuked him or beat him.” (53-54) Later, when Okonkwo kills Ikemefuna, a boy who was slightly older than Nwoye and who lived with Okonkwo’s family for several years and had become a part of the family and like Nwoye’s twin, Nwoye begins to deter from his father even more. Okonkwo went with the elders to kill Ikemefuna in the forest because the Oracle had said that it was his time to be killed. After all, he was given to the village as a sacrifice for penance. Several people advised him to not go with the elders to kill him because he looked up to him and viewed him as his father. But he went anyways because they told Ikemefuna that they were taking him back home. Okonkwo went and slowly distance himself from Ikemefuna and “As the man who had cleared his throat drew up and raised his machete, Okonkwo looked away. He heard the blow. The pot fell and broke in the sand. 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. (61) Nwoye knew that Okonkwo had killed him and held his anger with his father because he respected but feared him. When missionaries come, and Okonkwo and his family’s bonds/faith is tested, Nwoye breaks away from Okonkwo forever. Missionaries come into the villages and when Okonkwo was told that Nwoye was seen looking at them, he beat him. Nwoye was simply interested in the music and in the fact that it welcomed outcasts and that it portrayed a world where brothers were always together, unlike him and Ikemefuna. Nwoye left the compound and never returned. When Obierika, Okonkwo’s best friend saw him a few years later, Nwoye said “he’s not my father,”(151) In conclusion, Okonkwo’s self fear has ruined his relation with his son because his fear and hatred stem from the fact that Nwoye is different than him, just as his father he was different than and resented his own father.