Zontae Hooks - THINGS FALL APART
The title of my book is THINGS FALL APART. The author of this book is Chinua Achebe. The genre of my book is Historical drama. The setting of the book is in Africa. The place of the story is the tribe in Nigeria. Umuofia was the name of the village where Okonkwo and his family lived. The time of the story took place in the 1900s.
The major characters in things fall apart are Ezinma, Ikemefuna, Nwoye, Mr. Brown and Okonkwo. Ezinma is Okonkwo’s eldest daughter and Ekwefi’s only child. Ikemefuna is fifteen years old and he is from a neighboring clan, Mbaino, who is given up to Umuofia as a sacrifice for killing one of the women of Umuofia. Nwoye is Okonkwo’s eldest son and he resembles his grandfather
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Kiaga. Unoka is Okonkwo's father. He is a talented musician, he is lazy and irresponsible. Ojiugo is a wife of the protagonist, Okonkwo. Obierika is Okonkwo's best friend and also a respected man in Umuofia. Chielo is a priestess in Umuofia and he is a widow with two children. Agbala is the Oracle the prophet of the Igbo. The last character is Mr. Kiaga. He is a Christian African and he heads the congregation in …show more content…
He is a boy taken prisoner by the tribe as a peace settlement between two villages. Ikemefuna is to stay with Okonkwo until the Oracle instructs the elders on what to do with the boy. For three years the boy lives with Okonkwo's family. Then the elders decide that the boy must be killed and the oldest man in the village warns Okonkwo to have nothing to do with the murder because it would be like killing his own child. Okonkwo helps to kill the boy despite the warning from the old man. Shortly after Ikemefuna's death, things begin to go wrong for Okonkwo and when he accidentally kills someone at a ritual funeral ceremony, he and his family are sent into exile for seven years to appease the gods he has offended with the murder. While Okonkwo is away in exile, white men begin coming to Umuofia and they peacefully introduce their religion. As the number of converts gets bigger the foothold of the white people grows beyond their religion and a new government is
Ikemefuna, is one of two of Okonkwo’s son, and Nwoye’s brother, he does not have a biological relationship with Okonkwo or Nwoye. Ikemefuna was an offering by the people of Mbaino to Umofia for the killing of Ogbuefi Udo’s wife. The elders did not know what to do with Ikemefuna, so they gave him in the meantime to Okonkwo.
With the Christian missionaries are followed by British colonizers. This new political and religious order will upset Okonkwo's social order. He works extremely hard throughout his life to achieve his status and be a better man than his father, Unoka. However, like his father he doesn't completely fit into the community. ...
Things Fall Apart, a story by Chinua Achebe, is about a man named Okonkwo who has many achievements and lives in an Ibo village in Umuofia, Nigeria. The beginning of the book introduces the main characters, including Okonkwo and his household. He has three wives and children with each of them. Okonkwo gained fame in his village from a wrestling match, respect from his titles in war, and money from farming; he is a leader in his Ibo clan. His success is driven out of his hatred toward his father who was not a strong man or a good farmer. This causes him great anger and makes him despise all things that his father stood for. The beginning of the novel is rather slow due to much detail written about day-to-day life in the clan,
He was in great conflict with the ideas of the white men and the missionaries. Okonkwo saw that their beliefs had not only changed the daily life of the Ibo, but it also changed the people themselves: “He mourned for the warlike men of Umuofia, who had so unaccountably become soft like women” (Achebe 183). The author uses strong diction to compare the men before and after colonization. This quote also portrays Okonkwo’s opinion towards the cultural collision. He values strength and masculinity immensely because of his fear of appearing weak like his father Unoka. When he describes that the men of Umuofia changed to be soft like women, this shows how much he dishonors the Western ideas and how it has taken over the village. He made an attempt to get rid of the Western influence by urging the tribe to fight like men, but they refuse to. He was determined and still attempted to furthermore encourage the people of Umuofia to revolt against the new culture. He realizes that his attempts to return the village back to the way it was before were futile. He knew that Christianity was tearing his people apart, but knew he was incapable of making change to help his people. Okonkwo then starts to feel hopeless and abandoned by his clan, which causes him to commit suicide by hanging himself: “Obierika… turned suddenly to the District Commissioner and said ferociously: ‘That man was one of the greatest men
Okonkwo is often described as being similar to characters in Greek tragedies. Okonkwo knew that the end of his clan was coming, and that they would do nothing to prevent it from happening. He took his life out of desperation. He had struggled his whole life to become a respected member of his community, and suddenly his world is turned upside down and changed forever because of an accident. Okonkwo sees that he is fighting a losing battle, so he quits. Suicide was one of the biggest offenses that could be committed against the earth, and Okonkwo?s own clansmen could not bury him. Okonkwo?s death symbolizes the end of patriarchy in Umuofia. The last page of the book is from the point of view of the white Commissioner, who notes that he wants to include a paragraph on Okonkwo?s life in his book entitled The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of Lower Niger. Okonkwo?s struggles, triumphs and defeats are all reduced to a paragraph, much like his culture and society will be reduced.
...ke one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart” (176). Obierika should be the character that the reader sympathizes with instead of Okonkwo; he deals with the injustices caused by the missionaries without the flaws of Okonkwo, emphasizing his innocence.
In the novel, Things Fall Apart, written by Chinua Achebe, Okonkwo is a sympathetic character 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.
Since his childhood, Okonkwo has always been ashamed of his father, Unoka. Unoka was rarely able to feed his children, which made Okonkwo scared and embarrassed. When he went out into Umuofia, he found that the villagers had very similar opinions towards his father. As...
Ikemefuna, an adopted son of Okonkwo, died by the orders of the oracle and by the hands of the villagers of Umuofia. Okonkwo accompanied Ikemefuna in his last hours, walking towards the outer boundaries of the village. Okonkwo took part in Ikemefuna's murder, even though another village elder warned him to not be part of the killing. Okonkwo's slash ended his adopted son. The oracle gave the villagers specific commands of how Okonkwo should not participate in Ikemefuna's death, but Okonkwo defied those directions. Defying the oracle means defying the deities the village worships. These reasons left Okonkwo's actions unjustified.
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.
Ikemefuna was Okonkwo’s “adopted” son. Ikemefuna and a little girl were taken away from their families in a neighboring village after a man from his village killed a man in Umuofia’s wife. Ikemefuna was given to Okonkwo as a peace offering and he fit in quite well with his new family. Okonkwo’s other sons were greatly influenced by Ikemefuna, and Ikemefuna’s relationship with Okonkwo was closer than that with his biological father. After three years of living with Okonkwo, Ikemefuna was told that he was going home. In reality, the oracle had told Okonkwo that Ikemefuna was to be killed. As Ikemefuna was on his journey “home” his innermost thoughts give his opinion
Unoka – Okonkwo’s father, Unoka, was considered lazy and a failure. He never worked and always took from others. Okonkwo considered him a complete embarrassment and vowed never to be like his father. He had to hate what Unoka once loved, and never borrow money or stop working.
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe is a story about personal beliefs,customs, and also a story about an identity confliction. There is struggle between family, culture, and religion of the Ibo tribes. It shows how things fall apart when these beliefs and customs are challenged and how a personal identity changes for a man. The novel concerns the life of Okonkwo, a leader and local wrestling champion throughout the villages of the Ibo ethnic group of Umuofia in Nigeria, Africa, his three wives, and his children. Throughout the novel, Okonkwo is internally challenged and slowly becomes someone that is no longer recognizable by his friends or his family. When Okonkwo faces change, his identity starts to fade.
Okonkwo is one of the respected leaders of his village. When a man from a neighboring village kills one of the women from Okonkwo 's village, a peace settlement requires the son of the man who killed the women to come live in Okonkwo 's village. Unfortunately, a decision is made to kill the boy. After the boy dies, Okonkwo accidentally kills Ezeudu’s son. For his crime, the village determines he must spend seven years in exile to appease the gods.
David Carroll writes, of the novel Things Fall Apart, "This incident is not only a comment on Okonkwo's heartlessness. It criticizes implicitly the laws he is too literally implementing..." (Carroll) The incident that David Carroll refers to is the death of Ikemefuna. Ikemefuna was a young boy who was handed over to the village of Umuofia as compensation for the murder of one of that village's citizens. He is handed over to Okonkwo, a great man in the village, to whom he gives every affection. The brief life with Okonkwo and death of this innocent young man, and the life of Okonkwo himself, is a microcosm of life in Umuofia. Inconsistencies, brutalities, and conflict abound in even the highest of Umuofian life. And as Ikemefuna is led off to be murdered by the man he calls father, "the whole tribe and its values is being judged and found wanting" (Carroll).