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A True Failure

Chinua Achebe’s, Things Fall Apart, is a story of an ambitious, determined man, Okonkwo trying to keep his culture alive while the Christian missionaries try to destroy it. Okonkwo works hard as a young man so that he will not end up as his father, Unoka, who had no titles and who was buried in the evil forest with nothing but the debt he owed. But Okonkwo pushes on and becomes an important man in his village. To his astonishment his oldest son Nwoye begins to show many of the same characteristics of Okonkwos father. The relationship between the two was not good and would eventually end in the two never speaking again. Okonkwo sees Unoka and Nwoye both as failures but Okonkwo himself is a failure from being exiled, to coming back to his land and not being able to make a difference, and then finally his final destruction.
“ Okonkwo’s gun had exploded and a piece of iron pierced the boy’s heart” (Achebe 124). The exile begins. It happened so quickly, without any thought....

Posted by: Veronica Gardner

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