Okonkwo's Fear

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The book Things Fall Apart , by Chinua Achebe , is about the internal conflict of a man named Okonkwo who fears weakness, and being weak like his father. Achebe has written this book to show the Igbo tribe through the eyes of Okonkwo, a man struggling between his fear of weakness and his love for his children, to the rest of the outside world. And so, Achebe uses Okonkwo's internal conflict between his fear of weakness and his and the want to live his kids to present the idea that fear should not control your life and actions.The main character Okonkwo, has a fear of being weak. This fear starts to envelop his life and warps the way he acts,feels,and thinks to the point where he murders his son.“Dazed with fear, Okonkwo drew his machete and …show more content…

“A child’s fingers are not scalded by a piece of hot yam which its mother puts into its palm.” Okonkwo feels that he should not be punished for the crime of killing ikemefuna but actually wishes the he will be punished for ikemefuna's death because he feels deeply sorry for it.Whenever the thought of his father’s weakness and failure troubled him he expelled it by thinking about his own strength and success. And so he did now. His mind went to his latest show of manliness. okonkwo has to constantly remind himself about how manly and strong he is to get over the laziness of his father and the death of his son okonkwo is stuck in between two states of believing that the murder of his son is justified because of his strength and power but the other half of okonkwo knows that what he did is wrong and the death of his son was not right Okonkwo is letting this fear of weakness take control of his actions, thoughts, and feeling to the point to where he is driven to murder 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. this quote shows that he used to be a good man and still is but if not addressed or taken care of fears can manifest into something too strong to overcome Even

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