In both Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Peter Weir’s Dead Poets Society, there exists a conflict between both father and son in both of these works. Although taking place in completely different places and time periods the conflict between Okonkwo and Nwoye in Things Fall Apart, and the conflict between Neil and Tom Perry in Dead Poets Society, they both have striking similarities. In both works the fathers want their sons to be just like them when they grow up, and both of the sons do not want to be what their father wants them to be. In Dead Poets Society Neil Perry wants to be more involved in the arts. He loves literature and poetry, but is most fascinated by acting. His father on the other hand is not so thrilled by the idea of his son being involved in the arts. Tom wants his son to be a doctor who will go to an Ivy League school, what he feels a successful person does. At the beginning of the school year, Tom talks to Neil at the beginning of the year and tells him that he is doing too many extracurricular and that he should leave the school newspaper, which Neil is the assistant editor of. When Neil says that it would not be fair for the other members of the club his father takes him aside and tells Neil to never oppose him …show more content…
Tom told Neil to not even think about being part of a play or being involved with it. Yet Neil defies his father by auditioning for the play and getting the lead role. Yet Neil’s defiance ends in a different way from Nwoye’s defiance. Neil’s Father arrives at the theater and immediately after the show, pulls Neil away from everyone praising him and takes Neil home where he is told that he is being unenrolled from his school and being enrolled in a military school. Unlike The conflict between Okonkwo and Nwoye where Nwoye ends up escaping and getting above his father, Neil is once again shut down by his father and is taken away from all that he