Famous French fabulist, Jean de La Fontaine, astutely stated, “A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.” People, both in real life and literature, seal their fate through their own actions. The novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe captures the cultural life of the Igbo people before and after the influences of British colonialism by focusing on a representative hard-working character named Okonkwo. The Igbo believed that Chukwu, lesser gods, ancestors, and their own personal gods were responsible for determining the destiny of one’s life. Through proverbs regarding motivation, achievement, and respect, Achebe communicates that destiny must eventually be accepted. Achebe utilizes proverbs concerning motivation to illustrate the concept that destiny must eventually be accepted. The proverb “As the elders said, if a child washed his hands, he could eat with kings” (8) is the first to prove this concept. The proverb implies that motivation is important to successfully achieve a goal. No ordinary child would eat with kings; therefore the child must have motivation. Since it is referring to Okonkwo, it shows that Okonkwo was truly motivated and successful since he “had clearly washed his hands and so he ate with kings and elders” (8). The additional praise “if ever a man deserved his success, that man was Okonkwo” (27) suggests that Okonkwo believes that he can control his destiny. People are motivated to succeed and are also motivated by success. Okonkwo’s destiny seems to coincide with the prosperity of his village. However, at the end of the novel, things seem to have “fallen apart” (176) and Christian missionaries divide the village. Since Okonkwo finally realizes that he has no control ov... ... middle of paper ... ...t should not forget to be humble” (26). The proverb means that one should remember to be demure because they are nothing compared to the controllers of their destiny. The man who has become successful due to his destiny should be grateful. Okonkwo believed that “he had cracked them himself” due to his “grim struggle against poverty” and hard work (27). This goes against respect and implies that Okonkwo rejects the concept of immutable destiny. Yet his own hard work came from his fear of his father’s qualities, and his father was the way he was because of his destiny. Okonkwo’s father chose to accept his destiny of being perpetually indebt and having “taken no titles at all” (8), as seen by the numerous opportunities he had to change his ways. Since Okonkwo was destined to have Unoka as his father and become who he was, he accepted his destiny by working hard.
Fear is like religion which can poison thoughts and bias views before overwhelming and ultimately taking over one’s innocence and morals. In Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo’s reprehensible actions are caused by his fogged view of right and wrong since his life is dominated by a lifelong fear of failure. Okonkwo’s profound fear of failure originated from his failures of his father Unoka, and Okonkwo’s life purpose is to be the opposite of Unoka and to achieve high titles. If Okonkwo’s Ibo culture prospers then the title hierarchy will remain and Okonkwo can eventually earn his respected place in his community. Fear takes over Okonkwo’s’ ability to process reason and responsibility, and loses sight of why his village makes certain decisions when changing events make things go astray. Okonkwo feels as though he must maintain a high and respected title in his community, and he does all he can to protect his ego. In addition, his fear of failure causes Okonkwo to impulsively react to events that pose a threat to his chance at high titles and success. Due to Okonkwo’s fear of failure, he dangerously strives for personal achievement and success, which causes him to irrationally react to drastic changes in his Ibo culture and ultimately leads to his downfall.
Okonkwo’s father was a man who was not looked up to through out the village. This was because he was a man who was lazy and would not think of the future. On page 3 it is stated, ‘In his day he was lazy and improvident and was quite incapable of think about tomorrow.’ As a result of Unoka’s lifestyle, Okonkwo despises a lazy lifestyle. Okonkwo’s life is all about hard work and never failing. As it is quoted, ‘He had no patience with unsuccessful men. He had no patience with his father’ (Page 3). Okonkwo had an obsession with working and never giving up. He would work all day until he made sure all tasks were complete before he would go and rest. Page 11 explains, ‘During the plant season Okonkwo worked daily on his farm from cockcrow until the chickens went to roost.’ As it is visible in many sections of this book, Okonkwo has a fear of becoming a failure and this causes him to work as hard as he can. As it is stated above, Okonkwo had no patience with his father, which was due to his fear. Quote: ‘But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness.’ Okonkwo’s fear of becoming like his father wa...
Many people see other people as equal or lower than or higher than them. This includes by wealth, knowledge or rights. Few people know about the caste system in India, but many people are able to point out the untouchables. Why? Is it because everyone knows that they are better than the untouchables? Some people feel that the untouchables are strictly only in India, but they don’t realize that even bigger countries have untouchables; they are just called something else. Many tribes in Africa also have untouchables, including the Igbo tribe.
Okonkwo is “a man of action, a man of war” (7) and a member of high status in the Igbo village. He holds the prominent position of village clansman due to the fact that he had “shown incredible prowess in two intertribal wars” (5). Okonkwo’s hard work had made him a “wealthy farmer” (5) and a recognized individual amongst the nine villages of Umuofia and beyond. Okonkwo’s tragic flaw isn’t that he was afraid of work, but rather his fear of weakness and failure which stems from his father’s, Unoka, unproductive life and disgraceful death. “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….It was not external but lay deep within himself. It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father.” Okonkwo’s father was a lazy, carefree man whom 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.” (5) Unoka had never taught Okonkwo what was right and wrong, and as a result Okonkwo had to interpret how to be a “good man”. Okonkwo’s self-interpretation leads him to conclude that a “good man” was someone who was the exact opposite of his father and therefore anything that his father did was weak and unnecessary.
Culture makes us who we are. Each individual has their own culture from their experiences in life and is developed from societal influences. The various cultures around the world influence us in different ways which we experience at least once in our lifetime. There are occasions, especially in history, where cultures clash with one another. For instance, the English colonization in Africa changed their culture. Chinua Achebe, the author of Things Fall Apart, portrayed this change in the Igbo people’s society, especially through the character Okonkwo in the village of Umuofia; the introduction of Western ideas challenged him. In the novel Things Fall Apart, the author Chinua Achebe introduces to us Okonkwo whose character’s response to the
“With a father like Unoka, Okonkwo did not have the start in life which many young men had. He neither inherited a barn nor a title, or even a young wife. But in spite of these disadvantages, he had begun even in his father’s lifetime to lay the foundations of a prosperous future” (18). Most of his accomplishments were despite his father, whom Okonkwo loathed, but with whom I connected. In the novel, I relate more to Okonkwo’s father, Unoka, a much more laid back character. Like Unoka, I am in love with life, lazy, not worried about tomorrow, and deeply in debt.
The book Things Fall Apart successfully expressed how Chinua Achebe had succeeded in writing a different story. It pointed out the conflict of oneself, the traditional beliefs, and the religious matters of the Africans. Throughout the novel, Chinua Achebe used simple but dignified words and unlike other books, he also included some flashbacks and folktales to make the novel more interesting and comprehensible. Things Fall Apart was about a man named Okonkwo, who was always struggling with his inner fear although he was known for being a strong, powerful, and fearless warior. He feared of weakness, and failure more than the fear of losing and dying and that forshadowing the consequenses he got at the end. Through this man that Chinua Achebe represented the deep and rich human characteristics and the beliefs of one religion to another.
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe tells the story of how one unified Umuofian community falls due to its own inner conflicts, as well as to the arrival of Christian missionaries. Achebe wrote Things Fall Apart to change the brutish image of Africa, for the Western world. The use of changing perspectives greatly aided Achebe in accurately portraying Africa as colorful, diverse and complex. For Westerners, viewing Africans as more than tribal and barbaric was a new concept, of which Achebe helped usher in. The story is told through the eyes of many Umuofians, which gives the reader a personal sense for the individuals within the tribe. When all the individual pieces of the story are brought together, the sifting perspectives creates a vast overview of the community, while also deepening the readers since for the tribe by allowing personal details to show through. Achebe captures the complexity of the Umuofia community by changing the perspective from which the story is being told frequently.
The above passages were taken from the end of chapter three, part one. After finishing reading this book and then going back through it, I found these passages very ironic in regards to how the story eventually ended. Okonkwo believed that because he was such a fierce fighter, he could conquer anything life threw at him. However, it was his fierce, proud, fighting attitude that was his demise in the face of uncontrollable circumstances in the end. Okonkwo believed that war and brute fighting would fix everything. He was a proud and stubborn man constantly struggling to improve his standing in the tribal community. Okonkwo also had intense pride for his tribe and way of life. He believed it was the right way of life and not to be questioned. Everyone was supposed to fear war with Umofia due to their fierce warriors and greatness in battle. When the white men not only did not fear them, but openly threatened the tribal way of life, Okonkwo prepared to handle the situation the only way he knew how. He wanted to got to war against the new white invaders, chasing them from tribal lands and ending the threat of different ways of life.
Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart is a powerful novel about the social changes that occurred when the white man first arrived on the African continent. The novel is based on a conception of humans as self-reflexive beings and a definition of culture as a set of control mechanisms. Things Fall Apart is the story of Okonkwo, an elder, in the Igbo tribe. He is a fairly successful man who earned the respect of the tribal elders. The story of Okonkwo’s fall from a respected member of the tribe to an outcast who dies in disgrace graphically dramatizes the struggle between the altruistic values of Christianity and the lust for power that motivated European colonialism in Africa and undermined the indigenous culture of a nation.
People Fall Apart in Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe Karl Marx believed that all of history could be reduced to two tiny words: class struggle. In any period of time, a dominant class exploits a weaker class. Marx defines a dominant class as one who owns or controls the means of production. The weaker class consists of those who don't. In Marx's day, the age of Almighty Industry, the means of production were factories.
From an early age, Okonkwo was ashamed of his father, Unoka, who was unable even to feed his family. The unpredictability of receiving enough food at a young age was enough to inspire fear and embarrassment in Okonkwo who associated this embarrassment with his father and was given further justification for these feelings when he went out into Umuofia, discovering that the other villagers held similar opinions of Unoka. When he was old enough, Okonkwo began farming his own yams because “he had to support his mother and two sisters […] And supporting his mother also meant supporting his father” (25). Okonkwo’s self-reliance was admired, valued in the community where “age was respected […] but achievement was revered” (12); this admiration gave him feelings of security, and the respect of his peers pushed him towards greater self-respect, distancing him from his father. The security and respect became related in his mind as he viewed his acceptance in the community as his life’s goal and Okonk...
In the book Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe, we are able to read about the social changes the white missionaries had on an African tribe. Mr. Achebe describes the way of life before the missionaries arrived and then records some of the changes, which occurred due to the changed belief system introduced by these missionaries.
Okonkwo is very lost on the idea that success is not granted to us without doing the work to earn it. This idea works the same in our society today, especially in school. When a student works hard and takes the time to put forth their best effort, their results are positive. Although, when a student doesn’t put forth their strongest effort, they can’t expect to get the outcome they were hoping for. Earning success is a continuous cycle that is achievable, when the dedication is there. Okonkwo wrestles with this idea throughout the novel, blaming his failure on his chi. While Okonkwo is under the belief that his chi turns positive or negative based on his success status, the truth lies in his attitude toward
Okonkwo is a self-made man. He achieves greatness through his own hard work and determination. Okonkwo started his life without the benefits that other young men had. His father, Unoka, was a lazy man. He had acquired no honorary titles. When Unoka died, Okonkwo did not inherit any barn, title, or young wife. He merely acquired his father’s debts. Therefore, Okonkwo sets about to make a name for himself and to achieve greatness in his community. He diligently plants and harvests his yams, building a farm from scratch. He builds a large commune for his family. He marries three wives; one of them was the village beauty. He acquires two titles. Okonkwo is not a failure, like is father was. In Umuofia, “achievement was revered”, and Okonkwo’s achievement was immense (8). He was “clearly cut out for great things” (8). To the Igbo people, Okonkwo epitomizes greatness and success.