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Positives and negatives of each parenting style
Positives and negatives of each parenting style
Analysis of chinua achebe things fall apart
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Andrew Melander April 25, 2014 Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart In the novel Things Fall Apart, the parents have positive and negative effects on the people around them. Okonkwo has very little self control over the things he does. But even though Okonkwo has little self control and may make mistakes, he also has positive effects on Nwoye his son and people close in his life. He also has negative effects on Nwoye which cause permanent damage in his relationship with him. Along with the mistakes Okonkwo has made, there has been people who have also influenced him to have good intentions and bad intentions, like his father. Okonkwo cannot control himself when one of his wives or kids does something that makes him frustrated, he either beats them or punishes them in another way, “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 fear of a goddess” (Achebe 4). Okonkwo has tried to influence his son in positive ways but already sees that Nwoye is already...
Okonkwo let his ego get to him and it later led to his death. Okonkwo was abusive to his family; he beat his family because he was scared. Okonkwo beats his wife because he has fear, and being abusive relieves him from his stress. (Achebe 38) Okonkwo had beat his wife near the banana tree. Okonkwo was so abusive because in his tribe it was ok to beat your wife.
Okonkwo has always resorted to violence when he is text with the problem. One such time is in Mbanta when Okonkwo claimed that “if his children are praying to the white man's God, he would wipe them off the face of the earth." (Achebe 146) Again this shows Okonkwo resorting to violence to solve his problem. His problem is this new culture and religion invading his land. This quote also shows that his negative response will not be limited to the invaders, but anyone who joins them, even his family. They will all be punished by him. The thought of his family joining the white man creates a drastic negative response in Okonkwo. Another reason for Okonkwo’s strict punishment was probably from Nwoye. Nwoye had defied Okonkwo and joined the white man’s religion. This enraged Okonkwo and he threatened Nwoye. He later disowned him as his oldest son. This no doubt contributed to Okonkwo’s response to the invading culture.
For instance, because Okonkwo despises his father’s characteristics, he does everything he can to avoid them. Therefore, Okonkwo becomes a pillar of strength and stability in
Unlike his father, Okonkwo is a hard worker with little debt and a driven personality. His internal fear leads to his decision to beat his wife during the week of peace and to take part in the mandatory action of killing his beloved son, Ikemefuna.
Okonkwo is supposed to be comforting to his children, but instead he hurts them. “Nwoye overheard it and burst into tears, whereupon his father beat him heavily. As for Ikemefuna, he was at a loss. His own home had gradually become very faint and
“No matter how prosperous a man was, if he was unable to rule his women and his children (and especially his women) he was not really a man.” (53) This quote demonstrates one of the traits of masculinity that Okonkwo values, which is the ability to control his family. Okonkwo is the man of the household. He provides them food from his crops and a roof over their heads, and by his beliefs of masculinity he therefore holds all the power in his family. He wants to maintain the role of the man or authority figure of the household and whenever any of his wives try to talk back to him or argue, he would beat them. There was an example of this control in the novel with Okonkwo’s wives, Ekwefi and Ojiugo. Ekwefi was Okonkwo’s second wife, and in the novel, he beaten her in a fit of anger because he thought she had killed a banana tree.
In these few chapters that we read, we have already learned a lot about Okonkwo, his life, and how he shows sympathy to some, but to others he is heartless. Okonkwo is other wise known as an unsympathetic person. Okonkwo is a clan leader of umuofia who holds many titles and is well known among his people. Okonkwo's daily life consists of tending to the three yam farms he has produced and to make numerous offerings to numerous gods and to help himself and his family. Okonkwo's personality is hard driven, since his father did not provide for him and his family Okonkwo had to start man hood early and this led him to be very successful in his adulthood, Okonkwo is an unsympathetic character who only shows sympathy rarely because he believes it's a sign of weakness Okonkwo's family relationships make him a sympathetic character because when his children show signs of manliness or do their jobs right he shows sympathy towards them. He is an unsympathetic character because whenever he get a little mad he has to take his anger out on something and that is usually vented by beating his wife's.
Okonkwo is depicted in the story to be a very strong and fearless man, ruling his household with a firm hand. He stifles any emotion that would make him seem weak or like a woman. He shows little affection toward his children and his wives.
In the novel, Things Fall Apart, written by Chinua Achebe, Okonkwo is a sympathetic and unsympathetic character in regards to his family relationships with his adopted son, Ikemefuna, his daughter, Ezima, and his father, Unoka, as a result of he appears to genuinely care about his family; but, the pride within himself prevents his expression of such pride and concern openly. The protagonist, Okonkwo demonstrates his sympathetic character solely to himself, personally, and infrequently not in the eyes of others. During the plotting of Ilemefuna’s death, Okonkwo was hesitant to make the boy aware of his fate and also hesitant to take part in his death. “‘I cannot understand why you refused to come with us to kill that boy,’ he asked Obierika” Okonkwo was aware that the adopted boy from an opposing tribe thought of Okonkwo, not only as an authority figure and high-ranking tribal member/warrior, but also as a father—his father. Until the death of Ikemefuna, Okonkwo continued to show Ikemefuna kindness due to feeling that “his son’s development was due to Ikemefuna.”
Okonkwo crumbled under the newly developed society of the white man in Umofia. He could no longer act on his fury, vehemence or impetuousness, because acting in those non-compliant ways got him no further advancement and was frowned upon. Okonkwo lost his mental composure and everything in his life went to pieces because of it. His lack of sensitivity and understanding of those different from him handicapped his entire life. Okonkwo’s strength was further proven to have many fallacies because he was not strong in the important aspects of having composure and not acting on impulse. He could no longer control the people around him, nor his own life so he became misfortune of a classic tragedy.
Their beliefs are completely opposite each other because of Okonkwo's need to fulfill his own pressures and ideal image, which he burdens himself with. Certain characteristics he holds which his father does not is seriousness, determination, and brutality. Okonkwo cannot move on from his past, instead he forces his future to be effected by his past, which results in his emotional separation from others around him. Oknonkwo describes his father as "lazy, improvident and quite incapable of thinking about tomorrow.
In the novel Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo is portrayed as a respected and determined individual whose fatal flaw eventually works against him. Throughout the novel the readers are shown that Okonkwo has many of these Characteristics because he is obsessed with the idea of becoming just like his father. This becomes his flaw in the novel that puts him into exile and makes it hard for him to adjust to the changes that were made with in his village.
Okonkwo is the main character within the book, Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe. Okonkwo is an individual whom has many different personalities that are portrayed in different situations. He can be a nice and welcoming individual but also an abusive and harmful individual. Before returning to Umofia, in which the missionaries had invaded, Okonkwo had grown up upon resenting his father’s laziness, devoting his time in proving that he was much better than his father. That he was more respectable and masculine. These were qualities in which Okonkwo’s father had lacked. Upon reaching Umofia, Okonkwo becomes more passive than he has ever been. While watching in sorrow and grief of the coming of the missionaries as he is unable to anything about. The missionaries had turned Okonkwo into a completely different individual. Changing him for the worst.
Okonkwo sees his father’s gentleness as a feminine trait. He works hard to be as masculine as possible so that he will be the opposite of his father and overcome the shame his father brought to his family. Okonkwo deals with this struggle throughout the entire book, hiding the intense fear of weakness behind a masculine façade (Nnoromele 149). In order to appear masculine, he is often violent. In his desire to be judged by his own worth and not by the worth of his effeminate father, Okonkwo participates in the killing of a boy he sees as a son, even though his friends and other respected tribe members advise him against it. (Hoegberg 71). Even after the killing of Ikamefuna, Okonkwo hides his feelings of sadness because the emotions are feminine to him. He goes so far as to ask himself, “when did you become a shivering old woman” (Achebe 65), while he is inwardly grieving. The dramatic irony of the secret fears that Okonkwo has will open the reader’s eyes to how important gender identity is to him. This theme is also presented among Okonkwo’s children. He sees his oldest son, Nwoye, as feminine because he does not like to work as hard as his father (Stratton 29). When Nwoye eventually joins the Christian church, Okonkwo sees him as even more feminine. On the other hand, Okonkwo’s
Okonkwo is the strong, successful son of a weak father, Unoka. This has formed his character and will eventually destroy him . "And so Okonkwo was ruled by one passion- to hate everything that his father Unoka had loved."(17) Nwoye is presented as being similar to his grandfather, or at least that is Okonkwo's greatest fear: "Nwoye was then twelve years old but was already causing his father great anxiety for his incipient laziness. At any rate, that was how it looked to his father." (17) Here the narrator interferes in defense of Nwoye; what it looks like to his father may not be the truth about the boy.