1William E. Hollingsworth 3/2/13
“THINGS FALL APART” Essay
1st block English 10 Honors

Whoa, you there are you masculine or feminine? I will explain to you the character Okonkwo out of the novel “Things Fall Apart”. Okonkwo is a very complicating character to explain, but I will give it my best shot. Okonkwo in my opinion is a very masculine man but in excess. Okonkwo has a very strong perspective on what makes people masculine or feminine. To Okonkwo being masculine is when you are able to take care of yourself and your family and be able to maintain order in your household. But to him being feminine is when you don’t do anything but cook, clean, make babies, and do crops that are not as important as yams. Someone he views as being masculine is his friend Obierika, he views Obierika as being masculine because first he is able to take care of himself and his family. Also he is a fairly decent crop holder he can hold his own. Someone who he sees as being feminine is his wives because they display all the characteristics of a normal woman. His relationship with both of these characters are very strong because of the gender that they are, they act the appropriate way. Although Okonkwo Okonkwo’s biggest reason for being so strict on his sons and himself in being masculine, in the novel “Thing Fall Apart” is because he does not want his sons or himself to be like his father Unoka. Unoka was a towns drunk, he was also a lazy man, the only thing that he could do half way decent was play thee instrument. Unoka made it so that Okonkwo had to become a man early and take care of his mother and sisters. So he learned early that his father was a perfect example of what type of man he never wanted his sons or himself to be like. Which according to him his father was the exact opposite of a masculine man, he shows more of a feminine structure. An example that in the novel “Things Fall Apart” that Okonkwo is a man that has feelings but he does not show them is when his daughter had gotten sick. Okankwo and his wife Ekwefi both have a bond with their daughter, to Okonkwo she displayed features that he wished that his boys had, he wish she was a boy. To his wife Ekwefi they have a bond, because all her other children died as infant or in the stomach. Which what we call miscarriages, they say that a demon child get in the stomach and tortures family by dying in the pregnancy. Ezinma is the only child that made it through her early years, so they both are worried to death for her. When the woman from the caves came to get Ezinma, Okonkwo said can she have one more day and she said no. So she took Ezinma and when she did, a little while later Okonkwo grabbed his machete and walked all the way to the caves, but when he got there he realized that she would be making her rounds of the villages, so Okonkwo went back home and decided he was going to come back later. That right there shows that Okonkwo does have a weak spot in him. We know now that his love for his daughter is more important than not showing that he is a man that has a soft side. Finally how I that Okonkwo will do almost anything to show that he is not soft is how he killed Ikemefuna. Ikemefuna came about when a girl