Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart centers on the strong traditional warrior Okonkwo as he adjusts to an evolving Umuofian landscape. Though Okonkwo is a man of relatively few words, the novel contains some key quotes that enable readers to get a better sense of the man who drives Achebe's classic tale. One notable quote occurs early in the text when Okonkwo asks Nwakibie for yams in a difficult harvest year:
I know what it is to ask a man to trust another with his yams, especially these days when young men are afraid of hard work. I am not afraid of work. . . I began to fend for myself at an age when most people still suck at their mothers' breasts. If you give me some yam seeds I shall not fail you (21).
Here, Okonkwo succinctly lays out the kind of man that he is. He is driven to succeed; he has had to work harder than many of his colleagues because his father's laziness held his family in poverty. This is an admirable trait that Okonkwo shows.
Okonkwo's intense fear of failure and being perceived as weak and "feminine" dominates his life. He works hard because he fears becoming his father. He defines masculinity in a toxic, rigid way. Indeed, his fear of being perceived as weak causes him to murder his adoptive son Ikemefuna. Okonkwo later questions why he is so shaken by his actions:
When did you become a shivering old woman. . . you, who are known in all the nine villages for your valor 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? Okonkwo, you have become a woman indeed (65).
These two quotes give readers piercing insight into Okonkwo as a character. His words allow us to see what he values and how his values are a double-edged sword.
Saturday, June 25, 2016
What are quotes from Okonkwo that give readers insight into his personality in Things Fall Apart?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Summarize the major research findings of "Toward an experimental ecology of human development."
Based on findings of prior research, the author, Bronfenbrenner proposes that methods for natural observation research have been applied in ...
-
One way to support this thesis is to explain how these great men changed the world. Indeed, Alexander the Great (356–323 BC) was the quintes...
-
Polysyndeton refers to using several conjunctions in a row to achieve a dramatic effect. That can be seen in this sentence about the child: ...
-
Both boys are very charismatic and use their charisma to persuade others to follow them. The key difference of course is that Ralph uses his...
-
At the most basic level, thunderstorms and blizzards are specific weather phenomena that occur most frequently within particular seasonal cl...
-
Equation of a tangent line to the graph of function f at point (x_0,y_0) is given by y=y_0+f'(x_0)(x-x_0). The first step to finding eq...
-
Population policy is any kind of government policy that is designed to somehow regulate or control the rate of population growth. It include...
-
Gulliver cooperates with the Lilliputians because he is so interested in them. He could, obviously, squash them underfoot, but he seems to b...
No comments:
Post a Comment