Things Fall Apart Research Paper

A child belongs to its father and his family and not to its mother and her family. Character Analysis of Things Fall Apart The purpose of this essay is to critically examine three characters from the book Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.

Gender roles play an important part in this piece and by looking at several characters within the piece, one can see specifically what those gender roles are and what they mean to the book overall.

He becomes prosperous, thrifty, courageous, violent, and adamantly opposed to anything else that he perceives to be “soft,” such as conversation, music, and emotion.

He marries three women and fathers eleven children among.

Throughout his life, Okonkwo attempts to be his father’s direct opposite.

From an early age, he builds his home and reputation as the precocious wrestler, who throws Amalinze the Cat “in a fight which the old men agreed was one of the fiercest since the founder of their town engaged a spirit of the wild for seven days and seven nights” (Achebe 3) He was also a hard-working and a productive farmer.They bring a new political system, colonial government; and a new religious order, Christianity.The two new systems weaken the cohesive force among the Igbos and leads to eventual collapse of the Igbo culture.Things Fall Apart “He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart (152).” Explain the significance of this statement.This exchange happens during a chat between Obierika and Okonkwo.He is stoic and tough on the outside but he was not a cruel man.Okonkwo’s life takes a turn a when an accidental murder takes place and Okonkwo was given the responsibility of adopting a boy named Ikemefuna from the village, Mbaino, where the murder took place.Okonkwo wraps his inward emotions by outfits of anger express through violence, stubbornness, and other irrational behavior. Okonkwo demands that his family work long hours despite their age or limited physical stamina, and he nags and beats his wives and son, Nwoye.Later on, during a funeral, Okonkwo accidentally shoots and kills a boy.For his crime, he was sent on exiles for seven years in his mother’s homeland, Mbanta.There, he learns about the coming of the white missionaries whose arrival signals a collapse of the Igbo culture.