Okonkwo Unoka's Significance

I would describe Okonkwo's life and background as self-made. He was brought up by his father, Unoka, who could not provide for his own family. Because of this, Okonkwo and his siblings often went hungry. He suffered from not having the resources that other families who were wealthy and prosperous, such as Okoye's family. Okoye is described in the book to have "a large barn full of yams and he had three wives. And now he was going to take the Idemili title, the third highest of the land" (6). This is a vast difference to Unoka's petty life of endless debt and no titles. The clan's name for a man like Unoka, who has no title, is "agbala," which means the same as "woman." Unoka was also seen as a coward, because he never fought in wars, due to …show more content…
She also is a widow with two children. Her significance in the story was when she came by Okonkwo's hut one night and claimed that Agbala wanted to see Okonkwo's daughter, Ezinma. Ekwefi, Ezinma's mother, wanted to come with Chielo and her daughter to the caves where Agbala resided. Chielo said she cannot, but when they disappeared into the distance, Ekwefi followed the priestess and her daughter. After much difficulty following them in the darkness, Chielo heard Ekwefi behind them and called out, and told whoever was with them to leave. Ekwefi realized that they were not near the caves at all, and that they had probably passed them entirely. When Chielo called out to salute the village of Umuachi, Ekwefi was sure that they were not going to the caves at all. Chielo stopped randomly in the village, then started to walk back to where they entered the village. Ekwefi followed them tiredly until they reached a ring of hills. She immediately realized that it was a shrine for some god. When Chielo crawled into a dark hole in the ground, Ekwefi was very sad. She was waiting outside when she saw Okonkwo come up to her. They waited together for the rest of the night. The next morning, Chielo crawled out the hole with Ezinma on her back, and seemed to not be surprised to see Ekwefi and Okonkwo. The four of them returned to Okonkwo's …show more content…
This is because most of the locals did not want to abandon their religion for one brought by foreign men they did not trust. The people of Umuofia knew what happened when the missionaries arrived at Abame. Abame was completely wiped out by the missionaries, and the same thing would happen to Umuofia if they did not prepare themselves in order to defend their clan. When the missionaries start to take more and more converts into their order, the locals always carry around machetes and guns, because they never know if the missionaries will result to force. The difference between them and those at Abame is that the Abame locals was that they were not ready for them to retaliate with force. However, the destruction of the missionaries' church in Umuofia was a bit unnecessary, because the Europeans did not destroy any major shrines for the locals' gods. The fact that Okonkwo and five other locals were only captured and set free by the missionaries and not killed outright shows that the Europeans didn't think that they were out of line in their