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.
No comments:
Post a Comment