Things Fall Apart Quote Analysis

Not only did Okonkwo’s father and exile impose his strive for control, but the roles of men in his society urged him as well. In his village, men were superior to women and masculinity was measured

Once his reputation has been far approved by his village, Okonkwo won’t show his fear to the people around him but he lets it dictate his actions. While we see Okonkwo go through many different emotions on the inside, the only one he reveals on the outside is anger. He wants to not slip up on his reputation of being a hard nose man, so he makes sure to bottle up all his other emotions and that fear that is a fire inside him. He sees taking out his feelings through actions to be the best way with coping with his fears, specifically his wives or children. This rapid-growing fame turned him into a man who, “...had a slight stammer and whenever he was angry and could not get his words out quickly enough, he would use his fists. He had no patience with unsuccessful men” (3-4). It is those fists that he constantly uses to beat his family with when they act in a way that might tarnish his reputation or his manliness. Not only does he beat that often, but he feels nothing from doing it even when he breaks clan law by beating one of his wives during the Peace Week when it's forbidden. While the reader sometimes sees him begin to soften up, the real brutal Okonkwo re-enters as he will kill if not killing would show cowardice towards others. That is exactly what he does as Ikemefuna—essentially

With all of this being said about gender roles I believe that the line “his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness” points to the idea that Okonkwo saw it as a failure and a weakness to show emotion and to show a “feminine” side. Okonkwo wants to project this hyper-masculine self and reject anything feminine leaving him with imbalances. When I say imbalances I mean things like that fact that he beats his wife and alienates his sons. I believe that the overall fear of being feminine stems from the fear of being like his father, who was considered a weak man. Continuing with the line “his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness”, Okonkwo is overcome with the fear of becoming his father, who is considered a weak and lazy man. Okonkwo lets this fear overcome him and causes him to project the hyper-masculine tendencies that he displays. The fear of being weak and lazy pushed him to the point that he takes part in the murder of his adopted son, Ikemefuna. Okonkwo’s inability to let go of this fear ultimately leads him to his own

From his childhood on forward Okonkwo hated males that resemble his father, all cowardly and emotional. Chinua Achebe gave us another visual on how Okonkwo despises being weak. This visual is a bit brutal in a way, but it is considered one of the clan’s custom which can’t be denied otherwise you will suffer the consequences. “Dozed with fear, Okonkwo drew his machete and cut him down, he was afraid of being thought weak.” (Pg.61) What can we take out of this quote? The quote tells us that Okonkwo is afraid of being looked down and fragile. Okonkwo is in a way selfish over his reputation, he only thinks about himself and does not sees how it affect the people around him. From this quote Okonkwo was put in the situation where he himself sees people being cowards, he had to kill his own son. He didn't wanted to be like his dad so he tough it out and sadly his own

One specific thing Okonkwo is a failure at is being a father. First of all, his only son, Nwoye, is a Christian and Okonkwo hates him for that. He sees him as weak and feminine, which all along has been the exact opposite of his goal as a man in society. Okonkwo has “constructed a sense of gender by

In the novel novel Things Fall Apart, the author, Chinua Achebe, wants the character Okonkwo to be viewed as a highly masculine and strict brute. Throughout the novel there are glimpses of the harsh qualities that Okonkwo possesses that start to break. When Okonkwo is exiled to his mother's tribe, he noticed the vast differences between the two. He noticed how feminine and cowardice their actions are, so he starts to easy up and gets a little sense of when to be how he is usually and when to be how the people in his mother's tribe are. Although he starts making changes to how he is as a person, he quickly realizes how weak it makes him look and how weak his mother's tribe is. When the Christians started moving into his mother's tribe, the people of the tribe wanted discuss or compromise with them, but Okonkwo had other ideas. When talking to the council Okonkwo says, “ Let us not reason like cowards… If a man comes into my hut and defecates on the floor, what do I do? Do I shut my eyes? No! I take a stick and break his head” (158). This quote shows how the author wants

After he is banished from the clan for accidentally killing a respected clansmen’s son, Okonkwo’s disdain for femininity is emphasized in that despite his mother’s tribe’s extreme generosity and kindness in providing for him and taking him in, he “regretted every day in his exile” (Achebe 162). By the end of the novel, Okonkwo’s beliefs so strongly define him, that his hatred for his people’s perceived “weakness” in refusing to go to war against the colonizers drives him to hang himself, an act not only terrible in and of itself, but unforgivable in the eyes of the society he lives.

To elaborate, the main character in Achebe's novel, Okonkwo, puts nearly all of his focus on this masculinity, refusing to show any kind of vulnerability. He, priding himself on his strength and masculinity, discredits anything feminine and tries to push the same expectation on his family. As Achebe states: “Okonkwo never showed any emotion openly, unless it be the emotion of anger. To show affection was a sign of weakness; the only thing worth demonstrating was strength” (20). This belief was mainly caused by the society Okonkwo was raised in; because those around him had this view of male dominance/masculinity, he grew up with the same idea.

Okonkwo’s Prejudice and Ambitions had lead to him living in fear and making rash decisions because of it. Okonkwo always fear of being weak. This fear cause him to make decisions, like the killing of Ikemefuna. He loved and cared for Ikemefuna but yet he stilled killed him. This quotes shows how much Okonkwo cared about Ikemefuna; “Okonkwo did not taste any food for two days after the death of Ikemefuna. He drank palm-wine from morning till night, and his eyes were red and fierce like the

Throughout the book Okonkwo continually chooses bad courses of action. The beginning of the book establishes the root cause of Okonkwo’s misogyny. The following quote reveals that Okonkwo is not an inherently cruel character- nor is he intentionally trying to be harrowing, but rather his callous demeanor stems from what he found to be a

First, Achebe reveals that Okonkwo's fear goes deeper than his fear of weakness or failure. Achebe states, “Okonkwo’s fear was greater than these. It was not external but lay deep within himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father” (Achebe 13). Okonkwo focuses on not becoming a man who doesn’t have a title (agbala) like his father. This leads him to failure; he compares his success towards his father’s failures. He makes the wrong choices in his life. For example, the death of Ikemefuna (the boy he allowed to stay in his home), a boy who he treats like a son and Ikemefuna thinks of him as a father. Okonkwo kills him, because he is afraid of  other’s thinking that he is weak. This ties into the fear of not being similar to his father because he is able to kill someone that made a positive impact on his

Although that’s what Okonkwo believed, after killing Ikemefuna, who he considered to be his own son, he broke down. He felt depressed for many days, felt weak and couldn’t eat or sleep. He didn’t understand why he was acting this way, he would try to keep a stable mindset and convince himself that he should not be affected by the death of Ikemefuna as that is a sign of weakness, which is not acceptable as he is a man of great power. “He did not sleep at night. He tried not to think about Ikemefuna,-but the more he tried the more he thought about him. Once he got up from bed and walked about his compound. But he was so weak that his legs could hardly carry him… When did you become a shivering old woman," Okonkwo asked himself, "you, who are known in all the nine villages for your valour in war? How can a man who has killed five men in battle fall to pieces because he has added a boy to their number?”(23). To be a man of great power and respect, many things must be done, including what Okonkwo did. There must be no reason to show weakness as those are not the values that must be portrayed for the younger

One of the most evident traits that Okonkwo possesses is his prejudice towards the people around him. In the book Okonkwo states how he wished that his daughter Ezinma was a boy. Okonkwo also mentions if she were a boy he would be so much happier, and how she has the right spirit. He says that his children do not resemble him, and that he is worried about his son Nwoye.“If I had a son like him I should be happy. I am worried about Nwoye. A bowl of pounded yams can throw him in a wrestling match. His two younger brothers are more promising. But I can tell you, Obierika, that my children do not resemble me. If Ezinma had been a boy I would have been happier. She has the right spirit.” (Achebe 8,17) In this text

Okonkwo was conditioned his entire life to believe in the dominance of a male, but his extremist take on the idea can be linked directly to his father. Unoka, Okonkwo’s father, is considered weak, effeminate, lazy, and a “grown-up… failure” by nearly everyone in his tribe (3). He was unsupportive to his small family, and, according to his son, Unoka died having “taken no title at all he was heavily in debt” (5). Okonkwo resented his father, ashamed of his title as Agbala, which is an insult to a man who has no titles or a word for a woman. This resentment for weakness and femininity sparked his intense drive for success, forcing him to leave behind everything his father stood for and destroy any similar signs in his future family. These failures of Unoka shaped Okonkwo into the harsh, violent man he became. As he grew up, Okonkwo became “a man of action, a man of war. Unlike his father he could stand the

"The story of Okonkwo is in a way the story of our culture; he pays a price because he places too much emphasis on strength and manliness." This quote has a significant connection with the central theme in the novel because since Okonkwo is the head of the household he feels as if he is more superior to women, specifically to his wives. Men in the Igbo culture tend to have women stay at home, do chores, and take care of the children while they work and provide money. Since Okonkwo is the only one providing the money in the