Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

All Fairness in Things Fall Apart Things Fall Apart is not sexist. Achebe’s book made readers feel as if the book was against women, but it does not. In America, if someone hit a girl or hurt her in any way, they would go to jail, but if they did that in the clan in the book, no man would care enough to stop the beating. In those neighboring clans, most men of their tribe wished for a son and not a daughter. Also, when a man was weak, he automatically feels that they are an old woman. Even though Achebe made the book seem sexist, Things Fall Apart is not. In Okonkwo’s clan, a man can beat up a woman whenever they wanted if she did not do something she was asked, just not during the Week of Peace. “The novel describes two instances when Okonkwo beat his second wife, once when she did not come home to make his meal. He beat her severely and was punished but only because he beat her during the Week of Peace” (Chun). After Okonkwo beat his wife, many men and women of the clan pleaded with him to stop. An elder of Okonkwo’s clan came to punish him for beating his wife. Since the elderly is very well respected in the clan, Okonkwo took pride in his punishment like he knew what he did wrong by beating his wife. This example is not sexist because women have an important role in this clan, which is to clean, garden certain

Something to keep in mind is when Okonkwo called himself an old, shivering woman, and everyone knows that most of the elderly people in this world do not have the best strength, even the elderly men. All around the world, men usually want to act tougher, and it is the way they were born. In Okonkwo’s clan, all the men were raised to be mature and very confident, and women were raised to do the same in their work. In fact, women probably didn’t want to feel like an old woman also, because they have just as busy jobs as men had in Things Fall