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Things Fall Apart Research Paper

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Hannah Sousa H English 10 Ms. Murphy 10/30/15 Second Quarter Essay In the late 1800’s, the Igbo society was located in Nigeria. This was the time period of Chinua Achebe’s novel, Things Fall Apart. In the book, the main character Okonkwo is a powerful man who detests his father and strives to be exactly the opposite of him. One day Okonkwo murders a clansman and his family is exiled for several years. While he is gone, Christian missionaries start to take over the clan and when Okonkwo comes back, he sees that the clan has fallen apart. Not wanting to live in a clan so different from the one he used to know, he commits suicide. Social justice is justice in terms of the dispersal of opportunities, privileges, and wealth in a society …show more content…

Individual responsibility is the willingness to accept the standards that a society has set for individual behavior and to make a personal effort to live by them. Achebe writes, “Okonkwo ruled his household with a heavy hand. His wives, especially the youngest, lived in perpetual fear of his fiery temper, and so did his little children” (Achebe 22). In the beginning of the novel, Okonkwo showed individual responsibility by taking care of his family and also becoming a role model for other men in the tribe. The fear his family had toward him showed how he was a fierce warrior who should be feared, to the other men, and they wanted to be like him. Achebe also writes, “Even when the men were left alone they found no words to speak to one another. It was only on the third day, when they could no longer bear the hunger and the insults, that they began to take about giving in” (Achebe 180). Okonkwo was a part of the group that were taken prisoner by the Commissioner. This act shows individual responsibility because the men didn’t betray their clan by speaking to the Commissioner. Instead, they said nothing and went through hunger and pain to keep respect for the clan and respect for

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