End Okonkwo example essay topic

Book Report 02/11/05 China Achebe's Things Fall Apart is about different traditional village cultures in Africa. It also speaks about the British who try and take over the village by introducing his religion and making it the higher and better religion. Okonkwo is the narrator of the story. The novel setting is in a small village called Umofia which is located in the southeastern part of Nigeria and it is in the late nineteenth century. Man verses Man is the conflict that is seen in this novel. Okonkwo is the main character in the novel.

He is a hard working farmer, wrestler, and clan leader who has several children with three wives. Okonkwo is afraid of being a failure like his father. Because of this, his behavior towards others is mean. In the novel it explains how Okonkwois a man filled with anger and violence.

At the end of the story Okonkwokills himself. This shows that he has let the violent part of him down and has become insecure and crazy. I did not like this character because of his mean actions. Nwoye is Okonkwo's oldest son. He is very lazy and following in his grandfathers footsteps.

Okonkwo is ashamed of him. The book shows how Nwoye still shows a feminine side when he likes to hear his mothers stories. In the end, Nwoye stops trying to please his father and finds peace in another religion with the British missionaries that have invaded the village. In one part of the book, Okonkwo accidently kills a boy and he and his family is banished from the village with his home and field burned to keep away bad luck. He must stay away for seven years. Okonkwois troubled by this because he is a man who wants only wealth and power.

Okonkwo continued to be mean and nasty but this made it worse. The missionaries trying to take over the village to make their religion the primary one, to change the Ib go tribe culture. Because of this Okonkwogot men together and resorted to murdering the British thinking that this would force them to stop over ruling the tribe beliefs. In the end Okonkwo felt like a failure because his violent ways toward his family, wives and enemies really did not change anything leaving him failure like his dad. Okonkwo could not stand this, so he committed suicide by hanging himself from a tree.

The villagers find his body in the back of his home. His son blames the missionaries for his death. The villagers request his body to be taken down because their customs say it is wrong for anyone to take their own life, so no one in the village can touch him or give him a formal burial. The head of missionaries take him down and take care of his funeral. This final act of Okonkwo makes the missionary write a book to make people see the changes over the years of these tribes from moving to different areas and learning different religions and cultures from different kinds of peoples. I liked this book because of the setting and I kept pulling for Okonkwo to change and conform to make his struggle easier.

I learned a lot about African culture and would recommend this to people who really like to learn and read.