Masculinity in Things Fall Apart Essay

MASCULINITY IN THINGS FALL APART

Things Fall Apart is set in the 1890s, during the coming of the "white man" to Nigeria. The novel portrays the clash between the white's colonial government and the traditional culture of the Igbo people. The novel is about a very strong man's rise to great prestige, fortune and power which in the end were overshadowed by his inevitable death. Okonkwo's demise was not because of colonization, but rather his downfall was attributed by his obsession with masculinity. Okonkwo's one and only weakness, his fear of becoming a failure like his father, drove Okonkwo to embrace the values of manliness, because for all of his desire to be strong, he was haunted by fear. This fear drove him to rashness, and in the end contributed to his death. Another one of Okonkwo's weaknesses was portrayed through the way he defined masculinity so narrowly. Okonkwo was apart of a patriarchal society and the male gender was already established with great authority. For Okonkwo, however, any kind of softness and tenderness was a sign of weakness. Throughout the novel we are shown men with a more mature understanding of masculinity but Okonkwo's ignorance often disallowed him to think thoroughly of his actions. At other times, however, Okonkwo's masculinity was all he had and was the primary factor that controlled his actions. He was often consumed in his actions by his unlimited boundaries of masculinity. Furthermore, a detrimental flaw was his unwilling behaviour to accept change in tradition. He was not able to adapt to the clashing values of both societies and the changing ways around him. He could not accept the fact that in a colonized society he would be an average person, rather than a distinguished and powerful male.

Okonkwo, son of Unoka, one of the strongest and most respected men of his society, feared of becoming an exact image of his father; therefore, embodying the values of manliness, he took on his own approach to life and how he dealt with problems in society. By adapting to his own deranged idea of masculinity he rejected everything that his father stood for; cowardice, gentleness, and laziness. Okonkwo stood for bravery, courage, hard work, and at many times, felt violence was the only answer to his solution. Okonkwo lived in a patriarchal society where males dominated, and Okonkwo often took advantage of his authority. He felt however, that he was right in his actions and hid behind this shield which he called, masculinity. With his perceptions of manliness tied into rashness, anger, and violence, Okonkwo brought his own downfall. The very instincts that drove him were the main factors that led him to his tragic demise. "He had no patience with unsuccessful men. He had no patience with his father" (p.3). "Nwoye was twelve years old but was already causing his father great anxiety for his incipient laziness." (p.10). Here, Okonkwo's terror of seeing his father's characteristics in his son were clearly visible. Therefore, he beat his son believing that it would give the boy guidance in a patriarchal society.

Secondly, another factor that attributed to Okonkwo's downfall was his constant aggressiveness and attempt to appear manly in his society. This was a major contribution to his downfall because it impaired his judgment on the actions that he took. Even when he took Ikemefuna into his home and clearly became fond of the young boy, he still chose not to show any emotions because showing emotions was thought as being weak. Later on in the novel, Okonkwo's attempt to appear manly to everyone proved to affect his judgment when he decided to kill Ikemefuna even though he was told by Ogbuefi Ezeudu not to be involved in the murder. Okonkwo's disobedience of Ogbuefi Ezeudu illustrated that his masculinity and rashness often got in the way of his actions, the reason why he was not able to cope with colonization. His ignorance of Ezeudu's advice contributed to portraying his narrow conception of masculinity. Comforting the boy as he ran towards Okonkwo would have showed a sign of affection, a sign of weakness. A reason for Okonkwo's rashness was his lack of ability to express his feelings. His emotions were complex, as his "manly" values often contrasted with his "unmanly" ones. An example of Okonkwo's contradicting personality occurred when Okonkwo followed Ekwefi into the forest in pursuit of Ezinma. This allowed us to see the tender, worried father beneath the tough, masculine exterior.

As well, Okonkwo frequently beat his wives and imposed physical harm to his loved ones, a display of his manliness. When colonization occurred he did not respect the new form of `authority' infiltrating his society. He claimed it to be "weak", and this allowed his masculinity, pride, and rashness to take over. In the end, he resorted to violence when he was humiliated by the hands of the "white man." Violence was the only solution that was ever good enough to resolve all of his problems. His beliefs in masculinity forced him to act strong and manly, which often overruled his reasonable judgment. The following is a perfect example of how Okonkwo allowed his masculinity to consume him and take complete control of his actions.

"Suddenly overcome with fury, sprang to his feet and gripped him by the neck.

"Where have you been"" he stammered

Nwoye struggled to free himself from the chocking grip.

`Answer me,' roared Okonkwo, `before I kill you!' He seized a heavy stick that lay on the dwarf wall and hit him two or three savage blows. (p.109)

Okonkwo built his life on the principles of masculinity and a slight showing of weakness would spark a fiery anger. Fire was used throughout the novel to epitomize Okonkwo's nature; he was fierce and destructive. After being released from prison, Okonkwo was furious and only looked to seek revenge. His only solution was a violent solution: to go to war. When the messengers tried to stop the meeting, Okonkwo ended up killing the lead messenger. This moment in the novel portrayed his character flaws of masculinity and rashness combined with violence and anger. He had only one thing on his mind at the time: to be a man, take control, and in his mind this was simply killing the messenger. Okonkwo realised the tribe did not want to go to war. At this very moment he believed they had all become weak and failed his expectations of what he considered to be masculine. He was found dangling from a tree by his own two hands. He could no longer live in a society where masculinity, the very thing that drove him throughout his entire life, was no longer a part of his society.

Finally, one of Okonkwo's greatest weaknesses was his inability to adapt to a changing society and to accept a world of new possibilities. He could not accept the influence of cultural change because he felt that they did not live up to his expectations of masculinity. If he was to embrace the new culture, and the values of this new world, he himself would become weak. He would lose his social status and self-worth, and everything which he had worked for his whole life, would have been worthless. There would be no such thing as positions of authority, and the views of gender would have become a clashing conflict. The "white men" felt that women were just as much equal as men, a point the Ibo society had never even considered. In order to keep his high power status, Okonkwo tried his best to make everyone keep with the old traditions of their society, because it was in the standards of those traditions that sustained his high position within the society. "In the land of his fathers where men were bold and warlike. In these seven years he would have climbed to the utmost heights. And so regretted everyday of his exile" (p.117). This excerpt was a perfect example that showed Okonkwo's drive for power and status. While in exile, he lived among the kinsmen of his motherland but resented them the entire period in which he stayed there. The exile was his opportunity to get in touch with his feminine side and to acknowledge his maternal ancestors, but he continuously reminded himself that his maternal kinsmen were not as warlike and fierce in comparison to the villagers of Umofia. He felt that they were weak for their preference of negotiation, compliance, and avoidance over anger and bloodshed.

Furthermore, when the "white men" brought themselves to Umofia's society, Okonkwo found himself fighting against the changing values of Umofia. If he were to embrace the changes of the new society, he feared he would be following the footsteps of his father. He slowly started to see his life become more like his father's, becoming a man of no importance and a man of no power in a society that was built on equality, and from Okonkwo's perspective, weakness. He could not bare the fact of dying with no status, and not as a man, but as a pathetic human being. As he began to see the influence of culture becoming more prevalent in his society, he realised he was beginning to live a life similar to his father. This caused him to take his own life, indicating that he would rather die than live a life of failure and insignificance. Okonkwo's principles of masculinity could not allow him to accept the reality of life and the fact that things change. He could not accept that in this new way of life he would be treated and respected equally just as much as the next man or even worse, as the next woman.

Okonkwo's relationship with his late father was the primary reason of his violent and ambitious nature. He wanted to rise above his father's legacy which he viewed as weak and feminine. The association with being weak and feminine was inherent in the clan's language. The narrator mentioned that the word for a man who had not taken any titles was "agbala", which means "woman." Okonkwo was a man of great stature and power in his society, but his life fell apart, hence the title of the novel, Things Fall Apart. Okonkwo's world came crashing down and in the end, resulted in his death. The embedment of manliness was given to him at a young age when he feared his father's womanly qualities and most importantly his failures in a patriarchal society. He became obsessed with living by his standards of masculinity and this forced him to embrace the values that were the exact opposite to those of his father's. Okonkwo's idea of manliness however was not the same as the clan's. He associated masculinity with aggression and felt that anger was the only emotion that he should display. For this reason, he frequently beat his wives, even threatening to kill them from time to time. He did not think about things, and we see him acting rashly and impetuously. His very life was built around being a man and it came to the point where it was the only thing controlling his actions and emotions. Things Fall Apart was the portrayal of a man, Okonkwo, whose idealism of masculinity was so farfetched, that, no one, not even himself, could fulfill the expectations, which sadly caused his very own destruction