Monday, February 4, 2008
Things Fall Apart: Chapter 7
In this chapter Okonkwo for the first time in the whole novel shows emotion!!!!!! He shows a lot of the emotion through his boys which I have never seen yet. He likes having them around much more than what he used to. Okonkwo tells them manly stories about war and things like that. I believe that Okonkwo is finally starting to let the boys see that he does have a little bit of a softer side to him, and he is just not all rough and tough. Even though this is a huge step for Okonkwo, of course something has to ruin it because it is a tradegy type of novel. The village elders finally decide to have Ikemefuna killed. When ever they killed him it said that Okonkwo showed some type of fear. I also believe that Ikemefuna's death will greatly effect Okonkwo and Nwoye, especially Nwoye. I also think that it is weird that the people of the tribe believe that the locusts like hide in this cave guarded by stunted men until it is time to let them go. The people of the tribe also view the locusts as a special dish which I also find very weird ( I just do not see how that would be any good). In this chapter it also shows how much Nwoye has grown. He now does not believe a lot of the stories that his mother tells him, and he now likes to listen to his father's stories. This also triggers some emotion in Okonkwo.
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3 comments:
Yeah he does show emotion, but what ever feeling he did have towards Ikemefuna did not come out while he finished killing him. I guess he does not realize how much Ikemefuna ment to his oldest son Nwoye or he did know but just did not care. Ikemefune really helped Nwoye get over his laziness, which is what I thought Okonkwo wanted. O well they just killed an innocent boy for nothing.
Yea, Okonkwo does finally show some emotion... and get this, he does it again later. I'm starting to think he isn't completely horrible. But yea, something bad is definitely going to happen. Not just the death of Ikemefuna either. And yea, the whole locust thing, that was just weird.
He does favor boys, no doubt. It's kind of sad in a way. These moments of peace are a rare thing in this novel for Okonkwo.
Ikemefuna's death is a sort of turning point in the story. Up to this point I was willing to give Okonkwo the benefit of the doubt, but this is an un-redeeming scene that Achebe paints him with. After this, I feel no remorse for him, since he took part of the killing.
The way I figure it, Okonkwo gets what he deserves in this book. He's sort of the Anit-hero, which makes the book different than many you may have already read.
Locusts = food.
Food = Survival
It's easy logic to follow when surviving in West Africa.
Mr. Farrell
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