Bijay Bajracharya

Elizabeth A.Whitley

ENG 201-096

April 29, 2012

                       The Short Happy life of Francis Macomber

  In “The Short Happy life of Francis Macomber” the author Hemingway’s theme of the story is courage which a man should posses. He introduces three major characters, Francis Macomber, Margot Macomber and Robert Wilson. The author describes Robert Wilson as a man with lots of courage where as Macomber is described as a cowardice. Margot Macomber plays the role of Francis’s wife in which she dominates Francis and gives him no respect at all. It is noticed that the relationship status between Francis and Margot is very complicated because Francis loves Margot for her beauty whereas Margot loves Francis for his wealth. It is evident when the author says “His wife had been through with him before but it never lasted. He was wealthy, and would be much wealthier, and he knew she would never leave him ever now” (Hemingway 11).

To make their relation more romantic and adventurous, they decide to go on a safari in a forest of Nairobi, Kenya where Robert Wilson turns out to be their safari guide. According to the psychoanalysis theory of Lois Tyson, “The clearest sign that an emotional problem is being repressed is the repetition of a self-destructive behavior, such as choosing unhealthy friends or romantic partners" (Tyson 25). It can be found that Francis Macomber is repressing the fact that his wife does not love him truly but for his wealth when the author says “His wife had been through with him before but it never lasted. He was wealthy, and would be much wealthier, and he knew she would never leave him ever now” (Hemingway 11). During their safari Francis gets chased by a wounded lion and leaves it to Wilson to kill it. He urges Wilson not to mention his cowardice to his mutual acquaintances. According to the psychoanalysis theory of Lois Tyson, it is found that Wilson is practicing avoidance when Wilson says “Nonsense. Let’s have a spot of the giant killer, Forget the whole thing. Nothing to it anyway” (2).

“Low self-esteem" is the belief that we are less worthy than other human beings and, therefore, don’t deserve attention, love, or any other form of life reward” (Tyson, 27) Francis low self-esteem is evidenced when the author states, “He was miserably ashamed at it. But more than shame he felt cold, hollow fear in him. The fear was still there like a cold slimy hollow in all the emptiness where his confidence has been and it made him feel sick”(5).Besides that, Margot is also found practicing avoidance by refusing to answer when she gets questioned by her husband for not being on her bed at 3 o’clock in the morning. Instead she replies saying “nothing as far as I’m concerned. But please let’s not talk, Darling, because I’m very sleepy” (11).

    According to Lois Tyson “We are Displacing when we take out our negative feeling about one person on someone else that we can relieve our pain or anger without becoming aware of the real cause of our repressed feelings”(26). Macomber’s displacement is evidenced when they go out to hunt buffalo. It can be witnessed that Macomber gets very mad at Wilson for sleeping with his wife that he does not feel any fear and kills two of the three buffalo (15).  I feel that Margot is having the feeling of fear of abandonment from his husband when Francis kills the buffaloes .She observes that Francis has gained confidence in himself and he might leave her. She contemptuously says “you’ve gotten awfully brave, awfully suddenly… the narrator states that her contempt was not secure and was afraid of something” (18).

                                           Work Cited

Hemingway, Ernest. The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. The Finca Vigia Edition ed. New York,NY: Simon Schuster, 1992. Print.
Tyson, Lois. Learning for a Diverse World: Using Critical Theory to Read and Write about Literature. New York: Routledge, 2001. Print

Bijay Bajracharya

Paper 2    

 Things Fall Apart

        The definition of a religion may vary from person to person and different religions may be followed or practiced by different peoples based on their tradition, custom and ethnicity. Religion helps an individual to cleanse his mind and stay disciplined. According to my religion, we worship a cow as a holy animal and we do not allow people to slaughter any cow in my country. But I see that people here in the United States slaughter cows and make a beef burger out of it. Similarly, in the text “Things Fall Apart” we can see that the people of Igbo have their own religion as well as the Christian missionaries.

  But the religion that the people of Igbo follow are really strange and weird compared to that of the Christian missionaries and does not make any sense at all. The Oracle was considered as a god and they all had to follow the oracle’s instruction. It can be evidenced when the author says, “Beware of exchanging words with Agbala. Does a man speak when a god speaks? Beware!”(101).The Oracle instructs Okonko to kill Ikemefuna and he does execute Ikemefuna without any hesitation in spite of him treating Ikemefuna as a son. It is also found that the people of Igbo have a belief that if a woman gives birth to a twins then it may bring bad luck to their family so therefore, they should be leave their twins in the sacred forest when the author says “Nwoye had heard that twins were put in earthenware pots and thrown away in the forest, but he had never yet come across them” (61). Moreover, we come to know that they have this custom where they do not bury the body of people who had died during the week of peace when the author says “If a man dies at this time he is not buried but cast into the Evil Forest” (32).As we go along the story, we come across a point where Okonkwo accidentally kills Ezeudu’s sixteen-year-old son. According to their religion, it was a crime and Okonkwo along with his family had to be exiled from his village for seven years. His huts were burned down and his animals were also killed.

  I just do not understand how people can follow such a religion that commands a father to kill his son, leave their children in the evil forest and not bury the body of dead people just because they were dead on the week of peace.On the other hand we see that the religion of the Christian missionaries were more logical than that of Umuofia. They did not fear living in the evil forest and built a church out there. The Christian missionaries backfired the Umuofian religion by surviving for more than 28 days in the evil forest. “At last the day came by which all the missionaries should have died. But they were still alive, building a new red-earth and thatch house for their teacher, Mr. Kiaga”(Achebe,151).This led many young people of Umuofia to convert their religion as they saw that some the beliefs of their religion were not true at all. The Christian missionaries welcomed women who had given birth to twins as well as the ones with no titles. They built school and encouraged children to join them.their society were much more advanced than that of Umuofia.

       The outdated religious beliefs of the Umuofia let their people to convert their religion to Christianity causing many fathers to disown their children as Okonkwo had with Nwoye. The fight against the Christian missionaries to save their tradition also caused Okonkwo to commit suicide and his body did not even get buried by his clansmen because according to their religion committing suicide was against their custom. “It is an abomination for a man to take his own life. It is an offense against the earth, and a man who commits it will not be buried by his clansmen” (207).

Take Home Quiz

GENDER

 The society of the Igbo people is most probably found to be dominated by the males. Women are considered to be weak and not treated with respect. It is often found that the women are not given any right to perform any activity on their own. Okonko has a belief that for a person to be manly, he should always have his wife under his control and it can be evidenced that he does have his wives under control when the author says, “His wives, especially the youngest, lived in perpetual fear of his fiery temper” (13).When Okonko is forced to go back to his mother’s village, Uchendu explains how a child goes to his mother for comfort after being beaten or scolded by his father. Similarly, Uchendu welcomes Okonkwo to his mother land after being exiled by the people of Igbo. This is why “Mother is Supreme”. Although Okonkwo masculinity has helped him to gain much pride among his people but unfortunately he was not being liked for such behavior by his family when he severely punishes them by beating or threatening to kill them. I feel that the text leads the reader to believe that it is unhealthy to be an extreme version of my gender because Okonko believes that any other emotions beside anger would lead their children to become an example of his father’s nature.

FATHERHOOD

Okonko has always hated his father Unoka for being such an embarrassment in his life. Unoko was a very lazy man and was never concerned about his future. He almost owed money to everyone in his village. Whenever he had money with him he spent unwisely believing that one should enjoy his present rather than worrying about his future. “He always said that whenever he saw a dead man‘s mouth he saw the folly of not eating what one had in one’s lifetime” (Achebe, 4).As we go along the text we find out that Okonko feared that his children would follow the footsteps of his grandfather so he tried to keep Nwoye and his other children disciplined by threatening and beating him. “Okonko’s first son ,Nwoye was then twelve years old but was already causing his father great anxiety for his incipient laziness. At any rate, that was how it looked to his father, and he sought to correct him by constant nagging and beating and so Nwoye was developing into a sad-faced youth”(Achebe,13).

RELIGION

The person of Igbo seems to be really superstitious. According to them any women giving birth to twins should leave their twins in the sacred forest to be dead. They believed that one should not be engaged in any work or any violent activity. Moreover, they also believed that if a man kills one of his tribesmen, he would bring evil to the land and should be exiled from the village. The people of Igbo believed in many gods .they had separate god for earth, crops, food and many more. Whereas the Christian missionaries only had a single god in which they had complete faith. According to the belief of the people of Igbo ,any people living in the sacred forest would ultimately end up dying but that does not happen when the Christian missionaries during their stay in the sacred forest. In this way some people come to conclude that the religion of the missionaries were more strong and therefore the Christian missionaries won more converts.“At last the day came by which all the missionaries should have died. But they were still alive, building a new …that week they won a handful more converts” (Achebe, 151).

Things Fall Apart

As a story about a culture on the verge of change, Things Fall Apart deals with how the prospect and reality of change affect various characters. The tension about whether change should be privileged over tradition often involves questions of personal status. Okonkwo, for example, resists the new political and religious orders because he feels that they are not manly and that he himself will not be manly if he consents to join or even tolerate them. Okonkwo’s relationship with his late father shapes much of his violent and ambitious demeanor. . Since early childhood, Okonkwo’s embarrassment about his lazy, squandering, and effeminate father, Unoka, has driven him to succeed. To some extent, Okonkwo’s resistance of cultural change is also due to his fear of losing societal status. His sense of self-worth is dependent upon the traditional standards by which society judges him. This system of evaluating the self inspires many of the clan’s outcasts to embrace Christianity. Long scorned, these outcasts find in the Christian value system a refuge from the Igbo cultural values that place them below everyone else. In their new community, these converts enjoy a more elevated status. The villagers in general are caught between resisting and embracing change and they face the dilemma of trying to determine how best to adapt to the reality of change. Many of the villagers are excited about the new opportunities and techniques that the missionaries bring. This European influence, however, threatens to extinguish the need for the mastery of traditional methods of farming, harvesting, building, and cooking

Things Fall Apart

                                   

         Things Fall Apart

 Okonkwo is one of the wealthy and respected warriors of the Umuofia clan. He is driven by his hatred of his father, Unoka, and his fear of becoming like him. Okonkwo associates Unoka with weakness, and with weakness he associates femininity. Although Okonkwo 's father was a lazy man who received no titles in his village and died with huge debts, Okonkwo brought honor to his village by beating Amalinze the Cat in a wrestling contest. Until his match with Okonkwo, the Cat had been undefeated for seven years. The practice of sharing palm-wine and kola nuts is repeated throughout the book to emphasize the peacefulness of the Igbo. When Unoka’s resentful neighbor visits him to collect a debt, the neighbor does not immediately address the debt. Instead, he and Unoka share a kola nut and pray to their ancestral spirits. Okonkwo is selected by the elders to be the guardian of Ikemefuna, a boy taken prisoner by the village as a peace settlement between two villages after his father killed an Umofian woman. Ikemefuna is homesick and scared at first, but Nwoye’s mother treats him as one of her own, and he is immediately popular with Okonkwo’s children. During the Week of Peace, Okonkwo notices that his youngest wife, Ojiugo, has left her hut to have her hair braided without having cooked dinner. He beats her for her negligence, shamefully breaking the peace of the sacred. Wife-beating is an accepted practice. Moreover, femininity is associated with weakness while masculinity is associated with strength. It is no coincidence that the word that refers to a titleless man also means “woman”.  A man is not believed to be “manly” if he cannot control his women. Okonkwo frequently beats his wives, and the only emotion he allows himself to display is anger.

      

Characterization of Mrs. Newell

Characterization of Mrs. Newell

Mrs. Sam Newell can be categorized as a person whose social status comes right at the top of her priority list. To maintain her social life and her finance, she could go to the extent of commodifying her daughter as well. She commodifes her daughter by marrying her daughter Hermoine  to a wealthy man so that it would help her maintain her financial as well as social status.