Things Fall Apart

In Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, the perception of gender and the balance of male and female traits are very important. A good way to understand the different genders is by note taking to know about what is going on. The topics talked about in the additional notes that are not in my notes are the egwugwu, the clan’s ancestral spirits, which they take the form of masked men. Also, how Okonkwo was chosen to represent his clan because he is its fiercest warrior and when Ikemefuna stays with Okonkwo’s family for three years. During his stay Okonkwo tells him and his son masculine stories so they can be very strong and powerful one day. Nwoye also misses his mother’s stories, but he knows he makes his father happy when he listens to his. But one day Okonkwo was informed about Nwoye among the Christians and Okonkwo chokes him by the neck because Okonkwo does not like the Christians. He made him tell him where he has been and Okonkwo wonders how he could ever have fathered such an effeminate, weak son. Nwoye becomes a Christian because he has doubts about his native religion, so he feels himself exiled from his society because of his disbeliefs in its laws. He does not understand why twins are abandoned left to die in the Evil Forest, so he likes how the Christians allow the twins to live.


When Okonkwo was exiled for seven years and then returned to Umuofia, life had changed. A church was built and the white men changed their judicial system and rules of government. Okonkwo cannot believe that the clan did not fight back and destroy the white men and the church. Okonkwo’s lack of concern for the fate of his community is manifested when he does not greet anyone at his clans meeting. All he cares about is himself and he dies in dishonor. Then, evil spirits take over his body and strangers have to bury him.

Notes that are in my notes that are not in the additional notes is that Okonkwo beat the Cat in wrestling, and the Cat never had his back touch the earth until he wrestled Okonkwo. Also, the Week of Peace is important to gender because it is when a man does not say a harsh word to his neighbor and no work is done; also the king of crops is yams. The drums symbolize the heart beat of the people because people would work hard if they had a strong beat, like in wrestling. In my notes I also put that a women could keep her bride price if her husband was rude to her and if she ran away for no reason she had to give her bride price back.

The additional notes helped me understand more about Okonkwo and how he lived his life and how he treated others at both the beginning and the end. It also made me understand the way of society and how it worked out. The additional notes gave me facts about my topic of gender because it had information about almost every chapter in the book. This was helpful because I had an idea about the society and how Okonkwo lived, but I did not fully understand it because sometimes I would read a part of the book and totally not get anything. I just read and kept reading without a good grip of what was going on.

Other ways that my notes were alike are that I tried to have a little information about each chapter in my notes but my notes were way shorter than the additional notes. My notes were a lot different because I did not go as in depth as the additional notes went into too. To improve my note taking while reading Things Fall Apart, I could have tried to understand the chapters more and taken more time to understand everything and only looking for things about perception of gender and balance of male and female traits. I also should have written more of the page numbers down of the notes that I took, so if I did not understand what I wrote down I could have looked back at it. Another good idea would have been to place sticky notes in the book to where the very important things were that I should have looked back at after reading the whole book.

Here are my ten quotes from the book Things Fall Apart on perception of gender and balance of male and female traits.

1. “Three men beat the drums with sticks, working feverishly from one drum to another” (Achebe 40). This quote takes place when the whole village was at the ilo, the green village, where assemblies for sports and other things take place. The men are hitting the drums before the matches begin and they are the spirit of the crowd. This quote connects with my theme because the drums symbolize the heart beat of the people and it helps the wrestlers get ready for their big match.

2. “That showed in time he would be able to control his women-folk. No matter how prosperous a man was, if he was unable to rule his women and children, he was not really a man” (Achebe 45). This takes place when Okonkwo was telling his son, Nwoye, manly stories. He was telling him he needs to be strong and have rule over his family to be a great and powerful man. This is referring to what Okonkwo wanted, to be strong so he was not like his father. This connects to my theme because it is about a trait a man has to rule his family.

3. “These women never saw the inside of the hut. No women ever did. They scrubbed and painted the outside walls under the supervision of men” (Achebe 75). This takes place when the egwugwu hut was being decorated by the women. The hut was only for men to see the inside of it and the hut where the ancestral spirits met; it is referring to them too. This ties to my theme because this is another role the women had to do.



4. “The law of Umuofia is that if a women runs away from her husband her bride price is returned” (Achebe 78). This takes place when Odukwe was telling a story about a women and how she ran away from her husband to save her life. This is referring to what a woman should do when she leaves her husband. This connects with my theme because a man cannot harm his wife and if he does, the woman can leave him.

5. “It is not bravery when a man fights with a woman” (Achebe 79). This is when a man was rude to his wife and he needed to go beg his wife to come back. This is referring to the man who was mean to his wife and she ran away. This connects to my theme because a man always needs to be loyal to his wife.

6. “Three men helped Obierika to slaughter the two goats with which the soup was made” (Achebe 96). This was when men would go out and kill their food so the women could cook it. The men would do all the dirty work and the women would cook the food for them. This connects to my theme because it’s the role of both men and women and what they did to help the family out.

7. “Clearly his personal god or chi was not made for great things. A man could not rise beyond the destiny of his chi” (Achebe 109). This was at isa-ifi ceremony. This meant that a man could not have more power than his personal god. This is referring to all the chi’s. This connects with my theme because a man’s other half is his personal god who helps him out a lot.

8. “A woman is buried with her own kinsmen and not her husband’s” (Achebe 111). This was when Uchendu was talking to Okonkwo about death and where people went to be buried. A woman got to go back to where she was from to be buried, and this is giving all women the right to be at their home city. This connects to my theme because it talks about a women’s right to be with her family and it shows the importance of being buried.

9. “A man belongs to his fatherland when things are good and life is sweet” (Achebe 111). This is connecting to that a man is happy when his land is good and his plants are growing. This refers to all the land out there that is growing right and making life as well as it can get. This connects to my theme because it shows how a man can be happy when his land is going great.

10. “The efulef are the worthless and weak man of the village” (Achebe 119). This was referring to men with no title. These men believed that the strong faith and the white man’s god would not last. This connects to my theme because it is one of the groups of the men that were not important at all.

The fable The Jay and the Peacock is like Things Fall Apart because in both stories there were two groups and a member of each group wanted to be like the other group, like how Okonkwo’s son Nwoye wanted to be a Christian. In the fable, The Jay and the Peacock, the jay wants to be like the peacocks and then the jay’s group of other jays gets mad at him.

This theme connects to my personal ideas and a philosophy about life by that gender is a very important thing to know about. In addition, traits about male and female are always different, so it is good to know the difference between genders. I agree with the theme because gender is the most important thing to know about. This shows life, traditions, and parts of society for genders, it makes them strong or weak. I can relate to this because my dad is the man of the house and he is very supportive of his family. Therefore, he knows how to respect my family and gives us all that we need.

“Okonkwo is a character as old as storytelling, a man who represents or is a symbol of a culture that is breaking up or declining. He is so stuck on the idea of battle and confrontation as a means to his greatness, that he is tragically helpless before the modern power and persuasion of the missionaries.” This whole quote explains the book Things Fall Apart. When the quote talks about how Okonkwo is a man who represents or is a symbol of a culture that is breaking up or declining it means that Okonkwo had a lot of issues in his life time, and he showed cultures how hard it was to live. Okonkwo had to face troubles by not having anything in his early life because his father was a failure and Okonkwo did not want to be like him at all. Okonkwo had a fear of failure. Okonkwo wanted to be strong, have titles and be the greatest man that ever lived. He thought he could be strong and beat anyone in a fight, which he did beat the Cat, a man who never had his back, touch the earth in a wrestling match.

The part of the quote that says, “He is a tragically helpless before the modern power and persuasion of the missionaries” means that he cannot take over the church. He wanted to fight the church to see if he could win them over because he did not like their idea of life, but he failed and did not fight them. Okonkwo also thinks of himself as the best, but he fails himself alone. His lack of concern of the community hits him when he does not greet anyone at the clan’s meeting. He did have success of not being like his father, but he dies in dishonor like his titleless.

I think this statement is very true about Okonkwo, it explains his life and everything about him and what he does. He is a symbol of breaking up in a culture because he falls apart at the end of the story. He wanted to be the greatest and he could not be. He also wanted to have the church fall apart, but he could not fight them alone. As being a failure, he commits suicide. He could not take it anymore, so he ended his life.