Things Fall Apart Essay

Chapter 8 - Significance

Name: _________________________ Date: _____________

Consider the issues being discussed in the following excerpts and discuss their significance.

|       |Okonkwo did not taste any food for two days after the death of Ikemefuna. He drank palm |                                                                                                   |
|       |wine from morning till night, and his eyes were red and fierce like the eyes of the rat |                                                                                                   |
|       |when it was caught by the tail and dashed against the floor … He did not sleep at night…|                                                                                                   |
|       |he was so weak that his legs could hardly carry him. He felt like a drunken giant       |                                                                                                   |
|       |walking with the limbs of a mosquito. Now and then a cold shiver descended on his head   |                                                                                                   |
|       |and spread down his body.                                                               |                                                                                                   |
|       |“When did you become a shivering old woman,” Okonkwo asked himself, “you, who are known |                                                                                                   |
|       |in all the nine villages for your valour in war? How can a man who has killed five men   |                                                                                                   |
|       |in battle fall to pieces because he has added a boy to their number? Okonkwo, you have   |                                                                                                   |
|       |become a woman...