"Things Fall Apart" Response

I've read excerpts from this text before, so some bits of it were familiar to me. In high school, my teacher pulled the text that followed the fate of Ikemefuna and we read several of those pieces. This was my first time reading the whole book, though. That being stated, there were a lot of things that I got from this text. Not many of them were very literature related, but mostly societal norms and character personalities that are different than the majority of the society around me.

First off, Ikemefuna's character became much more developed for me through this reading. It was rather interesting how he stayed in the village so long and became so close with the family. I would have thought that people would have either accepted him into the tribe and let his servitude pay for the death of the young Ibo woman or killed him right away. It was strange that everyone "forgot" about him.

Okonkwo's development also threw me off a bit, and his character pissed me off at times. His constant portrayal of everything strong and manly seemed too over-the-top. I disliked how he let his anger get out of control in some instances and that the village often sided with him. For instance, when he beat his third wife during the week of peace for being out late, why would that demand such a serious beating? Along with his anger, he was a very prideful person. This ended up leading to his downfall because he returned from his exile to find the "white man" having power in his village. By rising up against  them, he earned himself a trial. But he hanged himself instead of proceeding with the trial. I didn't like that Okonkwo had spent his entire life trying to be strong and live a labor-filled life, but shamed himself and ruined his reputation forever by hanging himself. I feel as though this shows him as worse than his father because at least his father was strong enough to deal with his problems and didn't end his own life. This just goes to show that physical strength and endurance isn't all that matters in life; you must have emotional strength and the ability to be patient in order to be truly successful in life.