The vicious character is Azula because she does not recognize good. Azula is raised to be a person that only desires power over everything else. Her loyalty is only with Fire Lord Ozai because she will inherit the position if she demonstrates she is the best out of all her siblings. Azula enjoys the pain of others as shown when she is smiling when Fire Lord Ozai reprimands Zuko for disrespecting him. In addition, Azula speaks badly of Zuko and Iroh commenting that they are “failures” because of their disrespect toward Fire Lord Ozai. A prominent moment when she displays the attribute of not recognizing good is when she severely injures Aang. She attempts to murder Aang by manipulating a lightning strike to hit Aang which she successfully does.
Okonkwo also tries to show himself as an unsympathetic character to show that he is not a weak man, like his father, Unoka. (Being a weak man is a very degrading quality for the culture of Umofia.) An example of Okonkwo’s unsympathetic personality is Ikemefuna’s death. Although Okonkwo treasured the presence of the adopted buy, Ikemefuna, Okonkwo contributes the last and fatal blow to Ikemefuna, causing him to die in the Evil Forest. Okonkwo, regardless of his love for the boy, killed Ikemefuna ultimately to prove his manliness and strength to the tribe, a valued aspect of the culture. “Okonkwo’s machete descended twice and the man’s head lay beside his uniformed body.” (Achebe 146) Okonkwo is also very unsympathetic in regards to his father, Unoka. Unoka was a poor man who was always in debt; he had an interest in music and enjoyed talking.
During the times times of when the founding fathers lived, the slaves they brought in suffered from the chains on their hands and being dragged by their owners. In the book, Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson, the protagonist, Isabel, is one of those slaves. She was taken away from her home and was sold with her family when she was only 1 year old. Curzon is a slave who fights for the patriots in order to gain his freedom. Isabel and Curzon are bound by their chains from their lives. Even as their experiences may be different, they share many chains events that bind them together. This is shown through their scars, their quest for freedom, and their imprisonment.
Is Okonkwo sympathetic or unsympathetic? Okonkwo has a history of being messed up but he could also be kind hearted, because he take care of the thing he likes. I say “The thing he likes” because he could be really harsh and irrational with the things he doesn't like. He has two characters that would have different opinions about Okonkwo because he treats them differently. Is he unsympathetic because he beats his 3rd wife for messing things up and doesn't respect women, and he treats a new member in his village with a lot more respect on the first month of him being there.
6. Azar play in the story a emotionless guy: “oh, man, you fuckin’ trushed the fucker. Azar is pro-war the soldier. He doesn’t have a respect to other soldiers.
8. “And so Okonkwo was ruled by one passion- to hate everything that his father Unoka had loved.”
of the major enemies of Lord Otori. She then kills a man who tries to
Throughout the entire novel, cruelty is present in many characters. Amir is the main character and is the biggest carrier of cruelty. His father, Baba, treats him with great cruelty by not listening to his stories he's written and being upset with him for not having the drive to play a sport, especially soccer. Amir recognizes the cruelness his father emits and detects the fakeness of his loyalty during the party he throws for Amir after he won the kite tournament. Amir says Baba invited a bunch of his adult friends and didn't even feel like the party was for him.
Okonkwo's personal and social chi, or karma, is good because he works, provides for his family, and serves his community. Okonkwo is forewarned by one of the elders, Ezeudu. His spiritual chi begins to degenerate with the murder of Ikemfuna (Achebe, 4). "That boy calls you father," he had said. "Bear no hand in his death." (Achebe, 121). This is after offending Ani, the earth goddess, for beating his wife
Okonkwo thinks he is the owner of his household and he shows no mercy to anyone who angers him. “He ruled his household with a heavy hand. His wives…lived in perpetual fear of his fiery temper, and so did his little children. Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and weakness.” (Achebe, Chapter 2, p.8). Okonkwo beats his children and wives because of his temper which is influenced by the Igbo society; he puts on a hard exterior because he is afraid of being weak and unsuccessful. At one point, he attempts to kill his second wife with a gun because he thinks she is the cause of a tree’s death. In order to prove his power and strength, without thinking of the consequences, Okonkwo beats his youngest wife during the week of peace - a week when the village celebrates peace and who ever disrupts the peace will be punished by Ala, the earth goddess (Lycos, online). “His first two wives ran out in great alarm pleading with him that it was the sacred week. But Okonkwo was not the man to stop beating somebody half-way through, not even for the fear of a goddess.” (Achebe, Chapter 4, p.21). Okonkwo lives in a male dominant society where men are pressured to be strong and successful; because of these influences, Okonkwo develops an inner
His anger is anger is symbolized as the fire and therefore it helped to destroy Okonkwo by fueling his fire. “Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness. It was deeper and more intimate than the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw. Okonkwo’s fear was greater than these. It was not external, but lay deep within himself. 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 came to know that agbala was not only another name for a woman, it could also mean a man who had taken to 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 describes Okonkwo’s fear and how his life was dominated by fear, Okonkwo feared change, failure and weakness. So when the white men showed up and tried to convert people Okonkwo feared for the failure of his clan to stay together and fight as one. He also feared change, so he did not like the new religion or the fact that it said that all of his
Fearing that these changes might result his downfall in his social status and destruction of his family, he abhors Christianity. Through this misfortunes, Okonkwo starts to realizes that destiny is more powerful than himself as he mentions, “A man could not rise beyond the destiny of his chi. The saying of the elders was not true – that if a man said yeah his chi also affirmed. Here was a man whose chi said nay despite his own affirmation.” (131) Even though Okonkwo does some violent and cruel things, such as beating his wife and killing Ikemefuna, these are what he has to do to pursue what he believes for and obey the gods. These deeds are not that immoral and sinful to bring great calamities to his life. This demonstrates that fate is more powerful than humans’ acts and beliefs. As a result, Okonkwo, is a man who thinks that he can overcome the destiny, however, he begins to laments for his misfortunes and slowly accept the existent power of fate that dominates his life.
Okonkwo’s fear of unmanliness is kindled by his father, who was a lazy, unaccomplished man. Okonkwo strives to have a high status from a young age and eventually achieves it. He has a large family, many yams and is well known throughout the village for his valor. He
However, the tragic downfall of the two protagonists also show the reliance between fate and free will, for example Okonkwo. Okonkwo is a tragic hero, which means that he has a hamartia which leads to his eventual doom. His tragic flaw is the fear of failure and weakness (Achebe 12), a trait that that influences his choices he makes. His fatal flaw also made him proud because he saw change as a weakness, the chance being the arrival of the white men, and he reacted to that weakness with anger. For example, urging his fellow Umuofians to fight the European missionaries (Achebeb159). His pride allowed him to believe that the men of Umuofia will stand together and fight against the white men, but the Ibo people
Okonkwo's fear of being perceived as weak tragically leads to him to be unnecessarily violent and excessively prideful. These two fatal flaws lead to Okonkwo’s own emotional isolation, and his inevitable downfall. Driven by the fear of being seen as weak and emasculated, Okonkwo exhibits hyper masculinity and rage. Although this behavior initially leads to success in the patriarchal society of Umofia, rage is his greatest bane: it masks his compassion and pusillanimity. Onkonkwo’s obsession to never appear feminine is driven to the extreme. He denies affection even to his own family, “never show[ing] any emotion openly, unless it be the emotion of anger. To [Okonkwo] show[ing] affection was a sign of weakness; the only thing worth demonstrating was strength.” (pg. 28). Okonkwo whose “whole life [is] dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness.” (pg. 13) suppress his compassion in order to appear important and manly. Ironically this creates a stark juxtaposition between his own fear and his position as an alpha male. Rather than being masculine and courageous, Okonkwo just creates tension within his family and within himself. The pinnacle of this extreme hypermasculinity is when Okonkwo ignores the wisdom of the elder Ezeudu, and violently kills his “son” Ikamafuna: “As the man who had cleared his throat drew up and raised his machete, Okonkwo looked away. He had heard Ikamafuna cry “My father, they have killed me!”
Okonkwo's first and most prominent flaw is his fear of becoming a failure. It is greatly influenced by his father, but Okonkwo takes his fear to the extreme. Okonkwo's father was a very lazy and carefree man. He had a reputation of being "poor and his wife and children had just barely enough to eat... they swore never to lend him any more money because he never paid back." (Achebe Page: 5) In Umuofia, a father is supposed to teach the children right and wrong, and in this case, the lessons were not taught, but self-learned. Okonkwo had to rely on his own interpretations of what defined a "good man" and to him that was someone that was the exact opposite of his father. As a result of his own self-taught conclusions, Okonkwo feels that anything resembling his father or anything that his father enjoyed was weak and unnecessary. Because of his fear to be seen as weak, Okonkwo even strikes down a child that calls him father: "(and as the machete came down] Okonkwo looked away. He heard the blow... He heard Ikemefuna cry 'My father, they have killed me!'... Okonkwo draws his machete and cuts him down, he does not want to be thought weak." (Achebe page:61) The fact that he kills the child shows that the way that he thinks is wrong, that reputation is more important than the life of a child. Although it is a shame to be