Things Fall Apart

Chapter 1

Okonkwo and Unoka

Okonkwo is a very successful man thanks to his wealth and physical strength

• physical strength: at 18, he beat Amalinze “the Cat”, who was then considered the best fighter of Umuofia, in a wrestling match.
• status strength: “two barns full of yams” and had “just married his third wife”. He was also awarded several titles, and was hugely successful in inter-tribal wars.

CHAPTER 1

Unoko is the opposite.

• status weakness: he only had one wife, his family “barely had enough to eat”, and “people (…) swore never to lend him any more money because he never paid back”.

Chapter 2

The clansmen gather in the market. Ogbuefi Ezeugo, a noted orator, announces that someone from the village of Mbaino murdered the wife of an Umuofia tribesman while she was in their market.

Okonkwo travels to Mbaino to deliver the message that they must hand over to Umuofia a virgin and a young man, or the two villages must go to war.

• Okonkwo is chosen to represent his clan because he is its fiercest warrior.
• Mbaino agrees to Umuofia’s terms. The elders give the virgin to Ogbuefi Udo as his wife and the fifteen-year-old boy, Ikemefuna, to Okonkwo.
• Okonkwo tells his first wife to care for Ikemefuna, who is terribly afraid.

CHAPTER 2

Okonkwo is a wealthy man.

• He supports three wives and eight children, and each wife has her own hut.
• Okonkwo also has a barn full of yams, a shrine for his ancestors, and his own hut or obi.

Okonkwo also fears weakness.

• Associates it with his father and with women.

Because he dreads weakness, Okonkwo is extremely demanding of his family and has a fiery temper.

Chapter 3

Unoka goes to the Oracle of the Hills and the Caves to know why his harvest fails every year.

Okonkwo ask Nwakibie for yam seeds. Nwakibie gives him “twice four hundred yams”.

• It is the “worst year in living memory” for planting yam seeds.

The harvest was like a “funeral”, and Okonkwo will never forget the despair it brought him.

CHAPTER 3

“Go home and work like a man!”

Chapter 4

Ikemefuna is entrusted to Okonkwo's household.

• Nwoye becomes "inseperable" from him
• Okonkwo grows fond of him

Okonkwo breaks the Week of Peace by beating his wife.

He is punished by by Ezeani (priest of Earth Godess Ani).

CHAPTER 4

"The evil you have done can ruin the whole clan." - Ezeani

Patriarchal Meritocracy

Patriarchy: a system of society or government in which men hold the power and women are largely excluded from it.

• Every man of Umuofia was asked to gather at the market place” (page 9)
• Physical strength is valued: “As a young man of eighteen he had brought honor to his village by throwing Amalinze the Cat.”(page 3)
• Unoka is seen as a “failure”

Patriarchal Meritocracy

Meritocracy: a society governed by people selected according to merit.

“… among these people a man was judged according to his worth and not according to the worth of his father. Okonkwo was clearly cut for great things. He was still young but had fame as the greatest wrestler in the nine villages. He was a wealthy farmer and had two barns full of yams, and had just married his third wife. To crown it all he had taken two titles and had shown incredible prowess in two inter-tribal wars. And so although Okonkwo was still young, he was already one of the greatest men of his time. Age was respected among his people but achievement was revered.”

Spirits

In the darkness, ““children were warned not to whistle for fear of evil spirits” and “A snake was never called by its name in the night, because it would hear. It was called a string.” (page 9)

Spirits

“And when a man is at peace with his gods and his ancestors, his harvest will be good or bad according to the strength of his arm.” (page 17)

Okonkwo’s Fear of Resembling his Father

“[Okonkwo’s] whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and weakness. It was more intimate than the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw. Okonkwo’s fear was greater than these. It was not external but lay deep within himself. It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father.”

Okonkwo's Fear

Okonkwo's Character

Exterior strength is dominated by internalized fear.

• His fear relied on having to be different from his father: “It was not to resemble his father”.

Childhood: he considered his father as a failure.

• Exemplified by when his father was called “agbala”.

This fear is what mostly shaped him to become who he became, and was his main driving force throughout his life.

• Emphasis on working: direct consequence of his fear of having to be successful.

Okonkwo's Character

“But his whole life was dominated by the fear of failure and weakness”.

“During the planting season Okonkwo worked daily on his farms from cock-crow until the chicken went to roost.” and ”he rarely felt fatigue”.

Family Life

Okonkwo is the center of the family: any decision, any action taken by his family must be decided by him

• uneasy temper, family members fear him.

The combination of fearing Okonkwo and the latter’s behavior as a result of his fear of being like his father made his family suffer.

Family Life

“He ruled his household with a heavy hand.”.

Nwoye’s situation: as early as 12 years old, he was being constantly beaten by his father because he perceived characteristics of his father in Nwoye, in the form of laziness. This made him develop into a “sad faced youth”, this is key to understanding his conversion to Christianity later on.

“His wives, especially the youngest ones, lived in perpetual fear of his fiery temper, and so did his little children.”

“But his wives and children were not as strong, and so they suffered”

Distribution of Power

Patriarchal Society: the power of men and elders.

Distribution of Power

Respect from fellow villagers is also needed in order to gain power,

To gain respect, and in a certain way power, men have to suceed.

• Okonkwo working everyday on his farm given: “Okonkwo worked daily on his farms”.
• His wealth is also very precisely described in the passage, and therefore also is an important factor in how much respect, and power, an individual gets: “Okonkwo’s prosperity was visible in his household”.
• The size of his family is once again emphasized: “three wives and eight children”, that also proves how wealthy he is.

"Kukuri"

The power of status: familiy status within the community is determined by its wealth and the sucess of the father and his sons

• Okonkwo has made a name for himself as a succesful warrior (human heads --> war trophies), yam fields, wives, and titles.
• The issue of the family dowry for Kukuri

"Kukuri"

Patriarchal society: power lays within men (heads of families) and elders

• Okonkwo and Kukuri's father determine family values and relations within the community
• Older women also play an important role in decision making (when it comes to "uniting families".

The duality of the characters:

Okonkwo's exterior masculinity is the product of his dislike of his father (internal struggle)

Kukuri's decision to leave her husband and betray her family (internal struggle too)

"The Lottery"

Power of tradition and superstition

"The Lottery"

"Old Man Warner snorted. “Pack of crazy fools,” he said. “Listening to the young folks, nothing’s good enough for them. Next thing you know, they'll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody work any more, live that way for a while. Used to be a saying about ‘Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.’ First thing you know, we’d all be eating stewed chickweed and acorns. There’s always been a lottery,” he added petulantly. “Bad enough to see young Joe Summers up there joking with everybody.”

“Some places have already quit lotteries,” Mrs. Adams said.

“Nothing but trouble in that,” Old Man Warner said stoutly. “Pack of young fools.”"

"A man who broke the peace was dragged on the ground through the village until he died. But after a while this custom was stopped because it spoiled the peace which it was meant to preserve" .

"Children were warned not to whistle at night for fear of evil spirits".

Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness. It was deeper and more intimate than the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw. "

"Nanette"

The power of "the group" and of traditions

"Punchlines need trauma, because punchlines need tension and tension feeds trauma. I didn’t come out to my grandmother last year because I’m still ashamed of who I am. Not intellectually, but right here [points to heart], I still have shame."

Hannah and Okonkwo, as characters, are polar opposites.

They both live in societies where "the group" is stronger than the individual. It is "the group" that has the power to determine values.

They are both affected by their environments to alter themselves. However, Okonkwo cannot work throught the power fear has, whereas Hannah actively fight against it.

"Nanette"

"She said to me, ‘The thing I regret is that I raised you as if you were straight. I didn’t know any different. I’m so sorry. I knew well before you did, that your life was going to be so hard. I knew that, and I wanted, more than anything in the world, for that not to be the case. And now I know that I made it worse. I made it worse because I wanted you to change, because I knew that the world wouldn’t.’"

"To be rendered powerless does not destroy your humanity. Your resilience is your humanity. The only people who lose their humanity are those who believe they have the right to render another human being powerless. They are the weak. To yield and not break, that is incredible strength."