Okonkwo,
the main character of Things fall apart, has got a special view of manliness
which varies a lot from the clan’s. Part of this play is based on Okonkwo’s
idea of manliness, and how it was developed by certain aspects and experiences
of his childhood.
To begin
with, it is utterly important to mention that the clan’s vision of masculinity
considered a man as a person who has achieved some certain titles in that
community, and those who have not got one, were called “agbala” (translated
into English as woman). This expresses how meaningful and necessary was for
them to do something pro community, something good and valuable for all the
people in the clan. Those were real men for the clan.
On the
other hand, Okonkwo’s idea of manliness was absolutely different from the clan’s.
His vision was developed by the image of
his father as a weak, poor and profligate person. So much so that he tried to represent
masculinity by rejecting all what his father believed in. In this sense,
Okonkwo believed that a real man was someone who was aggressive, and who’s only
feeling was disconformity and anger.
This idea
of a proper man made him believe that it was alright to impose his masculinity
in front of women, which made him think he was allowed to hit women, and to mistreat
them as he did with his wives.
All in all,
one of the points of this play is “changes” represented by Okonkwo, who even
though did not like the arrival of white Christian people to his town because
of the future changes it might cause, tried to make a change in his personal
life through being totally different from how his father was.
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ResponderEliminarIgnacio, I thoroughly enjoyed reading your post. First of all, I must confess that I entirely agree with your analysis. From my point of view, Okonkwo's view of manliness is heavily influenced by his father behaviour patterns. Power, strenght, toughness, among others are words that describe Okonkwo's view of manliness. He was a very aggressive man, unlike his father who is described as "lazy and improvident" by Chinua Achebe.
ResponderEliminarFurthermore, Okonkwo's failure of adapting himself to changes leads to the clash of the clan values and Okonkwo's values. This issue caught my attention because it is closely related with one quote that I read when I was younger: "Perdóname si no soy capaz de entenderte, solo trato de alcanzarte, aunque nos separa la distancia de tiempos distintos." (Anonymous). This quote shows that when time passes everything changes, thus it is our responsibility to accept and face these changes or we can get stuck in the past.
To conclude, I want to warmly congratulate you for doing such a great analysis of this topic.