He makes the anticipation of bad news worse than the bad news itself. As Kumalo “arrives” at the point of sorrow, it is a relief because although he still feels crushed to know all that has become of his son is a murderer, he at least stands on solid ground. This is shown when he goes to visit his son before the trial and loses respect for his brother because his brother refuses to try to grieve. He knows that by refusing to do so, his brother is also refusing to heal. Kumalo knows that there is no purpose in extending the journey, because then he would just be extending the pain.
The lack of emotional expression/compassion defines Okonkwo’s character. As shown in the beginning of the book, Okonkwo’s worst fear is to turn into his father. His father is an emotional man that has feminine characteristics and is languid. The example of his father leads Okonkwo to believe that feminine characteristics, such as love and compassion, lead to failure. Okonkwo strives for masculinity in order to be more successful than his father and to lead a life of achievement.
Okonkwo’s fear Things Fall Apart, written by Chinua Achebe, is a story of a man whose life is dominated by his fears. There are many subtle themes throughout this book. One theme that cries out over the rest is Okonkwo’s, the main character, fear of weakness as seen through his childhood, his oldest son, and eventually his death. Since his childhood, Okonkwo was ashamed of his father, “In his day he (Unoka) was lazy and improvident and was quite incapable of thinking about tomorrow”(p.4). By the standard of his clan, Unoka was a coward and squanderer.
Baba is the important character that controls everyone, such as how they live their lives and puts the negatives with the positives. This connection shows Amir’s feeling about Baba and about himself. All Amirs’ feelings cause much to go on, but all this just makes him realize how he was his father’s son. The father son relationship starts off very bad. Since the day Amir is born, he feels that his father dislikes him.
He believes that he is always right, he is abusive, and is always being short-changed by life. Even though his wife is impartial to his actions, she looks at him with an “anxious face at his shoulder,” which describes how weary she is when in the presence of her husband (Faulkner 1961). My father was also abusive. I was not yet born so I was not victim to the abuse but my older siblings and mother were not spared. Similarly, Sarty’s whole family lives under a blanket of fear and anxiety due to his father’s insecurities, and resentment for people who belittle him.
In Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe portrays a heroic man deemed with glorious and praiseworthy deeds he has contributed to the society. Okwonkos weak, poor, cowardly father motivates Okwonko to strive to become a better hero or person overall. First off Okwonkos success was mainly driven by the fear of resembling his father who is: weak, poor, and a coward. By having this bad father shifted Okwonkos perspective on life by being more of a materialistic man with power. For example, “He was possessed by the fear of his father’s contemptible life and shameful death” reveals how he perceives his father and shifted his whole life because of this.
His father despised white people and barely ever trusted any of them, which was the stem of his paranoia. Baldwin continues his life and begins to understand where his father’s anger and hatred towards whites came from. A specific line in the essay that basically sums up the Baldwin’s reason for this story would be “I learned in New Jersey that to be a Negro mean, precisely, that one was never looked at but was simply at the mercy of the reflexes the color of one’s skin caused in other people.” What Baldwin means in this statement is that he finally understood the hatred his father had in him towards the whole white against black situation. It gives the impression that he never really knew what the big deal was and that he realized the hardship his father went through which led him to a gloomy and unhappy life. This line is very significant because James Baldwin himself is a black male.
This action leads to him being considered a tragic hero. Creon’s human flaw of arrogance causes him to ignore reasoning and advice and listen only to his own thoughts. He states, "My voice is the one voice giving orders in this city". He is afraid to go back on his word because it will hurt his pride and he is afraid that it will cause him to lose power with his subjects. This action causes him to lose everyone that he loves.
Mr Earnshaw had a great love for Heathcliff and, after a little while, so did Catherine. This love and admiration towards the boy angered Hindley, Mr Earnshaw’s birth son. Hindley regarded Heathcliff as a “usurper of his father’s love and privileges”. The hatred that Hindley had for Heathcliff is not hidden by him and as Heathcliff grew up, he wanted revenge against Hindley for making his childhood miserable; this therefore shows that Heathcliff’s childhood was not a good
Even though Okonkwo loves Ikemefuna and in some ways thinks more highly of him than of his own son, Okonkwo participates in the death of Ikemefuna because it has been decreed by the oracle, and he is also scared of being thought to be weak by the other men with him. One of the major aspects of Okonkwo's character is the way that he set himself to be completely different from his father, who was thought to be weak, feminine and not manly enough. Therefore, throughout the novel, Okonkwo deliberately pushes himself to show everybody, including himself, how manly he can be. Note how the text describes the death of Ikemefuna in Chapter VII: He heard Ikemefuna cry, "My father, they have killed me!" as he ran towards him.