Ever had that certain fear of someone or something that it ruined your childhood? Well for some people, that something could end up ruining their whole life. In this story, fear of being like his father takes over Okonkwo’s life, and becomes his biggest defeat. “It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father” (13). He fears to show weakness, and does not want to show any emotion towards anything. His wives and children are afraid of him because he constantly beats them. He is essentially the alpha male in the tribe.
Okonkwo’s father, Unoka, was not the best fatherly figure. “Unoka, the grown-up, was a failure. He was poor and his wife and children had barely enough to eat” (5). People would laugh at him because he was a dropout. He was a heavy drinker. When money would find its way into his hands, which rarely happened, he would go off and buy a great quantity of palm-wine and share with his neighbors. Even in his day he was very lazy and careless. He was quite incapable of even thinking about what will happen the next day. Unoka was a debtor, or a man who would take something from another person and then not pay them back. He owed every one of his neighbors some sort of money. Sometimes it was a great amount. Okonkwo was so embarrassed by his father that he told himself that he was not going to be like him. “Even as a little boy he resented his father’s failure and weakness, and even now he still remembered how he had suffered when a playmate had told him that his father was an ‘agbala’ [woman]” (13).
Okonkwo’s fear of turning out how his father did was his biggest defeat throughout his life. “He was a man of action, a man of war.” Unlike his father, he could stand the look of blood (10). Okonkwo was a large man. He was tall and very muscular. He had bushy eyebrows and a wide nose which gave him a severe look. He was a very heavy breather and when he walked his heels hardly touched the ground. He never showed weakness. Even when...