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Okonkwo's Fear In Things Fall Apart

643 Words3 Pages

In the book “Things Fall Apart” the author chinua Achebe, explains the life of the main character “Okonkwo”. Okonkwo has many fears but, his greatest fears are failure and weakness. Okonkwo fears on being like his father. Okonkwo may have many conflicts with his tribe, but he still represents them as powerful warriors. His fear of weakness comes from his tribe. Many of his other problems come from his children and wives. The changes of the missionaries brought okonkwo great anger.
Okonkwo's feared becoming like his father. Unoka Okonkwo's father was lazy, improvident and was quite incapable of thinking about tomorrow (Achebe, pg #4). Unoka was a very irresponsible man he owed every neighbor some money, from a few cowries to a massive amount. …show more content…

Okonkwo's three wives and ten children are the greatest things in his life, but yet it has caused his trouble. Okonkwo would beat his wives and children. Okonkwo would constantly beat Nwoye hoping to correct his faults (Achebe pg 36). Okonkwo believed Nwoye was weak and lazy like his grandfather Unoka. Okonkwo influenced him to be like ikemefuna a hardworking young man. Ezinma is Okonkwo's favorite child from his second wife. He wished she would have been a boy, she would have been the perfect son (Achebe pg57). Okonkwo had threatened one of his wifes during the week of peace and he also killed a boy from a clan so he was exiled for seven years (Achebe pg 68). Okonkwo powerful warriors were no longer …show more content…

The missionaries had just moved into the village. They asked for a piece of land to build their church so they gave then a part of the evil forest (Achebe pg 75 ). All the villagers disliked the missionaries because they were christians, they believed that they only wanted to come into the village to take everyone. Nwoye Okonkwo's youngest son had been sneaking out into the evil forest to join the missionaries. When Okonkwo found out he beat Nwoye (Achebe pg 72 ). Okonkwo wanted to get rid of all the missionaries but the district commissary did not want to start war. So Okonkwo decided to burn down their church. Okonkwo was arrested by the district commissary and had to pay a

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