The Downfall Of Respect : A Character Comparison

Okonkwo is a wealthy and respected warrior of the Umuofia clan. Umuofia is one of the nine clans that are connected. The village consists of Igbo people in the African country of Nigeria. His fame became solely from personal achievements. Okonkwo was much unlike his father who was poor, a debtor, and basically a failure to his people. When his father died all, he took with him was debts that were never paid. In the village of Umuofia, a man is judged according to his worth and not according to the worth of his father. Okonkwo had great things planned for his life and wanted to be the nothing like his father whom he was so ashamed of. He had to start from scratch because his father wasn’t able to leave

The novel also explores the negative impact that inequality has on the lives of Nigerians. Characters experience both gender inequality and inequality between different classes of society. In the story ‘Tomorrow Is Too Far’ the author highlights that how her grandmamma treats her and brother differently. Her grandmamma taught her brother Nonso how to pluck the coconuts but not her. Because ‘girls never plucked coconuts’. Nonso was always given the first sip of coconuts and grandmamma cooked meals with him in mind, not his sister. Nonso’s sister was told instead ‘this is how you will take care of your husband one day’. And also her mother used to end her brother’s nightly goodnight ‘ho-ho-ho’ laughing, but never left her room laughing. That’s all because Nonso is grandmama’s ‘sons only son, who would carry on the Nnabuisi’ name. This demonstrates that the importance of name and that these beliefs lead to gender inequality. The author also shows the negative impact of gender inequality.

After Nwoye’s childhood, he discovers the trouble he has with pleasing his father, and Okonkwo always contradicts Nwoye about not having the same or even more status as Okonkwo had when he was his age. Nwoye will never be the “great farmer and great man” Okonkwo wants him to be, during society at this time, opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative was very admirable (33). With the type of negative feedback, Nwoye receives from his father saying that he will amount to nothing, shows how Nwoye develops insecurity with his identity as an Ibo citizen. Contradictingly, Okonkwo is very pleased and rather arrogant with his status in matter of the village. He is already one of the “greatest” men of his time starting from his youth when in Ibo culture age was respected. The setting of Nigeria plays a major role in the identity of Nwoye and Okonkwo seeing that prosperity for men at that time is having wealth and potent personality. Okonkwo was obviously successful in terms of riches; he owned a huge barn full with yams, the king of all crops, and has three wives. During this time Okonkwo lives a lush life and could not have been more proud of who he is identified as. Having the drive to accomplish significance in life, Okonkwo’s achievements were admired by most people in the village, showing “if a

-After Nwoye is lured into the Christian religion and abandons his culture and family, Okonkwo is ashamed and states, "you have all see the great abomination of your brother. Now he is no longer my son or your brother. I will only have a son who is a man, who will hold his head up among my people" (172). Nwoye's father disowns him only because he chooses a path untraditional to his culture. The serious, frustrated, and unhappy mood that is created in Okonkwo's statement gives the reader an idea of how much the Ibo culture values tradition, choice, and family.

Religion has the power to alter relationships between family members in a negative way. Besides being strong and successful, protagonist Okonkwo was very obedient to the Igbo religion and tried to follow it in any way that he could. Three years after Ikemefuna (a boy who was sent as compensation for the murder that his father had

To begin, Okonkwo's response to the Europeans shows how differences in customs and values can lead to conflict. When Okonkwo returns to Umuofia, he is surprised that his clan has been taken over by the Europeans and that people were starting to give up preserving their own religion and customs. When he confronts Obierika, Obierika explains to Okonkwo, “‘How do you think we can fight when our own brothers have turned against us? … Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.’” Okonkwo feels betrayed as many of his clan members have left and joined the Europeans, showing the clash between Ibo culture and Western culture. The Ibo people value staying true to their own traditions while the

Okonkwo is initially introduced as a proud, hardworking, successful warrior. He is described as "clearly cut out for great things" (6). But he is the son of a ne'er-do-well father; though genial and inoffensive, Unoka must certainly have been considered a failure. He is lazy and does not provide for his family. Not only is this disgraceful, but life-threatening as well. He is dependent on other members of the clan and must have been considered unsuccessful. Okonkwo chafes under such disgrace and his success is a consequence of his desire to be everything his father is not; society's vision of an exemplar citizen. The fact that Okonkwo is able to rise above his poverty and disgraceful paternity illustrates the Igbo's acceptance of individual free will. But Okonkwo's fate and his disharmony with his chi, family and clan are shown to cause his ultimate disgrace and death.

Okonkwo was a great clans member to the clan of Umofia. Through the acts of European expansion, Okonkwo and many like him felt the influence of colonization. “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe tells the account of Okonkwo’s life and the beginning of European expansion into Africa. This paper will explain the story of Okonkwo’s interactions with Europeans, and how they affected the African people.

Okonkwo’s story portrays the major differences between African culture and the idea that the Western society had on the African culture. Okonkwo is native to the Umuofia tribe and represented this oversized human being who with holds no emotion. All this makes Okonkwo seem very unrelatable and unfriendly, but this is what makes his relationships with the characters in the book so entertaining. For example, Okonkwo had a very negative connection with his father that affected him so much that it brought him to the point where it changed his life and is also the reason why he is so strict with his kids. With the introduction of these missionaries into the tribe, it completely changed the way the tribe acted and ended up bringing Okonkwo to a point where he had to pay the ultimate price. It was all because they couldn’t get along.

In the novel Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo, the main character, lives in a village, Umuofia, that has very strong beliefs and ways to live their lives. Within their tribe they have been living their life a specific way for a long time and that is just the way that their culture

Okeke – Naemake’s father; very religious; a rule follower; believes in traditional view that marriages should be arranged by the families, that people should never marry outside of their own tribe. He is the most dynamic character in the story and undergoes the greatest change when he feels remorse for rejecting his daughter in law and plans to make it up to her as soon as possible at the end of the story.

First, Okonkwo starts off as a poor child, as shown when the book states, “Okonkwo did not have the start in life which many young men usually had, he did not inherit a barn from his father. There was no barn to inherit” showing that Okonkwo and his family were penurious, compared to others in the Igbo tribe (Achebe 16). Eventually, through his hard work and effort, he became a noble leader, which emphasizes his role as a tragic hero. Throughout the story Okonkwo goes through many challenges, but “In the face of futility, however, he maintains his nobility of character”(Gaydosik).

In the novel Thing Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, Okonkwo, the protagonist, is a stubborn, hard-working, strong, and brave person. He has committed an accidental crime in his village, Umuofia and is expelled and goes to his motherland. The village is called Mbani, where he gets numerous help and care from his mother’s kinsmen. Okonkwo was received well by Uchendu, Okonkwo’s uncle, and learns more about Mbani’s culture and what they value. However, the culture of Mbani that Okonkwo, a stubborn man, experiences did not change him at all.

The description given early in the novel clearly establishes his character as being a strong and wealthy man who is well respected among the rest of the tribe due to his superior fighting abilities and his influential personality. Having achieved such elite status within the Umuofia clan, Okonkwo appears to be old-fashioned as it is seen in his approach in raising his family and tribal people. However, Okonkwo’s character changes incrementally with the emergence of a boy, Ikemefuna, from a neighboring village, who was brought to him because of his brutal attack against his wife Ojiugo during the ‘week of peace’. Amongst the Umuofia clan, the ‘week of peace’ is a tribal ritual whose conditions are not to complete any evil sins in a certain week span. After having accepted Ikemefuna into the family, Okonkwo experiences a shift in his mental state. Shortly hereafter, he questions this change, which demonstrates his lack of willingness to change which is clearly demonstrated in the book in several different ways like in chapter Eight, Okonkwo proclaims to himself, “When did you become a shivering old woman, you, who are known in all nine villages for your valour in war” (Achebe 56). This represents that his character has become a weaker, less influential individual amongst the nine tribes where he is well known. Symbolically, this depicts a fragile reputation in Okonkwo’s status within the community to which he belongs.

Okonkwo’s culture tells him to beat what he cannot fix, this idea evolved from his father, his mother culture and the lazy ways that came with it. The major factors that shape Nwoye’s view on a culture are his father, his mother culture and the white man. Along with Christianity he completely destroys the values of Okonkwo’s culture. “ Nwoye had been attracted to the new faith from the very first day, but he kept it a secret”(Achebe 149). Nwoye is too afraid of his father, as is, symbolically the clashing culture afraid of the mother culture and the outcome of the clash. The notion of the white man, along with Christianity assimilates Nwoye and his culture. And the factors above shape the view of what he wants a culture to be.