Gender Roles in Things Fall Apart Essay

childhood as she lives in a community where the female gender is looked down upon. Lily, Snow Flower and other female characters in the novel live quite peculiar lives that is fundamentally different from men. The existence of a woman in the novel Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is sole to bring honor to her family as well as her family by marriage by siring more children. The traditions and practices inherent in this community dictate the specific roles of the women in society. It is evident in…

an active and aggressive personality while women, however, are expected to be subservient and passive. These expectations shape how society is supposed to be and influence the decisions of individuals. In Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe, the protagonist, Okonkwo, best fulfils his gender role through his mentality, actions, and ideologies. First of all, Okonkwo demonstrates how to be the ideal man in accordance to the Igbo culture by expressing his feelings of humiliation when someone is…

cultures collapse. Things Fall Apart illustrates how cultures evolve when new ideas are presented, as seen in the arrival of the British or the “whites” in the novel. Achebe uses Okonkwo's two sons, Nwoye and Ikemefuna, to contrast different viewpoints on popular Igbo traditions such as gender and religious beliefs. In the novel Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe uses Ikemefuna and Nwoye to challenge traditional Igbo traditions. The character of Ikemefuna conveys the importance of the roles of…

Masculinity in Things Fall Apart and How to Date a Browngirl In both Junot Diaz’s How to Date a Browngirl and Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, there is a large focus on the importance of masculinity in both societies as well as the contribution of masculinity to one's identity. In Things Fall Apart there is a clear blatant division among the roles of women and men which is an idea that Okonkwo stands by firmly. In Junot Diaz’s How to Date a Browngirl… he is trying to prove to himself that he…

One of the overarching themes in the novel Things Fall Apart was that in Ibo society, anything that was considered strong meant having a manly characteristic and anything deemed to be weak meant having a womanly characteristic. The men of the village tend to keep their wives under submission, the wives are servile to their husbands. Also, men who are not successful, such as those without a title, are sometimes referred to as women in a demeaning manner. I found the treatment of the Igbo woman…

story of life and death in one culture known as the Igbo culture. Chinua Achebe has been able to rope in his readers through symbolism and from the plot of on of the most popular stories of this kind. In Things Fall Apart you are really able to see why he has given this story the title Things Fall Apart. The story includes many people throughout different parts of the story. In the beginning we focus mainly on Okonkwo and his actions, along with some of the other characters such as his wives and…

Questions about Irony The two most prominent examples of irony in Things Fall Apart are the District Commissioner’s novel, and the death of Okonkwo. After the entirety of the novel, the description of a whole world and culture with copious amounts of people, after the gigantic critical tragedy of Okonkwo, the District Commissioner decides to write a book. He ponders of giving this great man, powerful leader, a replete life, a single paragraph in his novel, “The Pacification of the Primitive…

cultures like a disease. This problem is demonstrated time and time again in Things Fall Apart. Okonkwo’s fear of being perceived as feminine or womanly is the catalyst for his downfall. It can be easy to recognize the harm that the Ibo people’s strict definition of masculinity causes when its effects are made so apparent in a novel, but most fail to acknowledge this as a problem in modern western society. In Things Fall Apart, it is well-established that Okonkwo is dominated by one specific…

Chinua Achebe reveals the faults within the Ibo society in his novel, Things Fall Apart. The Ibo community is located in Southern Nigeria with “low-lying deltas and riverbank areas [that] are heavily inundated during the rainy season, and are very fertile” (Countries and Their Cultures 1). Okonkwo, the main protagonist in the novel, is obsessed with many things, but specifically the growing of his yams. The reader later discovers that the number of yams a man grows reflects their rank in the…

Achebe’s View on a Patriarchal Society Chinua Achebe's novel, Things Fall Apart shows feminism from the male perspective. In the Igbo society, women typically take on the role of a housewife, which involves, cooking, cleaning, and anything that will benefit the man in the house. This was the standard way of life for a while in many places throughout the world, including in America. While Chinua Achebe illustrates the secondary role for women in a patriarchal society, nevertheless he departs…