Things Fall Apart Reaction Paper free essay sample

They came on the decision of killing him and Okonkwo joined in killing him due to his fear of becoming weak. But then, guilt haunts Okonkwo throughout the story. b. ) Nwoye is Okonkwo’s eldest son. He is not on good terms with his father and seemed to lose respect on him especially at the moment when Ikemefuna was killed. On the other hand, Okonkwo sees Nwoye as a disappointment. This is because of Okonkwo sees his father in him. In the latter part when Okonkwo was exiled for seven years, he was converted into Christian and had his new Christian name: Isaac. c. Ekwefi is Okonkwo’s second wife. She sees Okonkwo as someone who is so masculine especially when he beat Amalinze the Cat. We can also see that there is this love involved in their relationship since it was stated in the first part of the story that she ran away from her husband to be with Okonkwo. We will write a custom essay sample on Things Fall Apart Reaction Paper or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Though not stated in the book, she is Okonkwo’s favorite wife. She is someone who is not just beautiful but also bold and strong. He is closer to Ekwefi than her other wives. Ekwefi cares so much about her daughter. When Ezinma has iba, she woke Okonkwo up without hesitation by pounding his door. Also, when Okonkwo is leaving Mbanta, she was put in charge of preparing cassava for the final feast. d. ) Ezinma is Okonkwo’s eldest daughter. She thinks of his father as someone who is respected by everyone. She looks up to his father. She understands his father more than her siblings do. She is Okonkwo’s favorite. Okonkwo enjoys her wrongdoings in terms of given gender roles and he sometimes wishes that she was just a boy. She grew up and became the village beauty like her mother. She came back with her father after their exile in Umuofia and married there. . ) Obierika is Okonkwo’s best friend. He thinks of Okonkwo as a successful man. Okonkwo thinks of him as a dependable best friend. In the end, he accused the District Commissioner responsible for Okonkwo’s death. 2. ) Protagonist is the main or principal character in a story. The protagonist in this story is Okonkwo. This is evident since the story circulates on his life – his rise to positio n and wealth, the way he condemn and hate his father, his fall into exile, until his suicide. 3. ) The religion of Okonkwo’s tribe and the Christianity that Mr. Brown brings both believe in gods. But then, Umuofia’s religion believes in ancestral spirits and chi (personal deity) while Christianity believes in one God, who is the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. A proof that Umuofia believes in deity gods is when they said that A man could not rise beyond the destiny of his chi. â€Å"(Chapter 14, page 131) Also, another proof of the comparison between Christianity and the religion of Umuofia is the conversation of Mr. Brown and Akunna, when they both explained their religion to each other. Mr. Brown said that they (The Ibo people) worship carved woods and it is wrong. Akunna said that they acknowledge a creator God or Supreme Being, but they call him Chukwu because â€Å"He made the entire world and the other gods. † (Chapter 21, page 179) and the carved woods they worship are: †The tree from which it came was made by Chukwu, as indeed all the minor gods were† (Chapter 21, page 179). 4. ) Ibo Terms An example is the practice where they bring and leave those people infected with â€Å"the swelling† into the woods until they pass away. Even if it was a severe custom, it was necessary as for their opinion. Christian terms An example was when they rescue of the new-born twin babies from the forbidden forest. The Ibo tribe thinks that having a new-born twin babies is an evil sign and a curse for the women to have twin babies so they just let them die in the forest. This tradition came out to be very cruel to the missionaries. So, they showed readiness to go against Ibo tribe’s tradition for the babies’ life sake. 5. ) They maintain the belief that the egwugwu are gods when they are clearly masked humans because these are the symbol of the culture and independence of their tribe. Once the egwugwu loose power in the community, the clan’s culture and independence will also be lost. 6. ) It came from the Old Testament story of Abraham and his son, Isaac (Genesis 22: 1-13) in the Bible. The story is that God ordered the first patriarch Abraham to sacrifice his young son Isaac, but then when he saw him about to do it, told him to stop and sacrifice a nearby ram instead. The idea is that Abrahams  faith  was only being tested; but to prove himself a religious man he had to be ready to kill his first-born. Nwoye’s conversion to Christianity is revealed as an act of upheaval against his father, so there could be a sense that he is declining to be sacrificed or to follow his father. 7. ) For me, Okonkwo values his feeling of success and importance more than the rules of his village. Some evidences are: he violated the rule on the Week of Peace by beating his wife, he unintentionally killed Ezedu’s son, and he committed suicide. 8. ) If a member in our family had Okonkwo’s personality, he would be living a miserable life. He would be living in a place filled with people who got the same personality as he have because living in the city with the usual people is going to be a problem for them. For a living, maybe he would have a work that has got to do with perfecting things and a work which does not require him to mingle with a lot of people because that will be a great problem to them. He will have perfecting things and stuffs, reading books on his own, studying, and sharing serious or sometimes deadly stories even to children as for his hobbies. I also think that he will have an unhappy family. A family who’s having a hard time doing and acting naturally for someone in their family seeks and only accepts perfection, a family who cannot express their feelings since someone in the family thinks that open communication is not a need, and a family who cannot express their feeling to one another since someone in the family thinks that this is only for weak people even if it is not. 9. ) The proverb means the child, no matter how he tries, will still have a part if his personality alike from one of his parents. The more he declines and the more he tries to change and control it so much to the extent that he almost doesn’t care on how the other people around him feels, then he is more likely to become worse than what is expected. Yes, this proverb describes Okonkwo well. He condemned his father so much. He hated everything that reminds him about his father’s â€Å"weakness† so he did everything – he does not control his anger, he does not show his appreciation, love, and care to his family, and a lot more – that he can for him not to be like his father. But then, he ended up becoming a worse failure and weaker than his father when he committed suicide. 10. ) The title â€Å"Things Fall Apart† is significant for it foreshadows the disaster that will portray in the novel. It gives us a hint that the story will not give us a happy ending so we should not expect for one. It somehow gives us the idea that something, maybe the tribe or Okonkwo’s family, will fall apart, into pieces.