TFA+Reflections+Sam

Reflection #1

The 2 most interesting ideas were first the anger of Okonkwo and also the inside of Okonkwo. Okonkwo seems to be like a machine saying that emotions are a bad thing for humans but then why is he expressing anger? Although he "claims" to be trying to destroy and stamp out all the bad habits, he is doing a little too much. He seems to be unable to control his anger to the point of taking a gun and firing at his wife although fortunately, he missed. The inside of him usually expresses what he really is and how soft he is and how he is actually capable of emotion. But still he suppresses it and just gives his family a grim face.

Reflection #2

One of the most interesting topics we talked about is sexism in this book. Sexism is dripping tremendously in this book and is overfilled with it. In this book we see the role of men and women having levels. Women on the bottom while men were on the top. The women were being suppressed while the men rose in power. So our debate today was that: is it right for men to suppress women and not have equality. Jenny's argument was that it wasn't right since they are not treating people equally and not giving women any rights. My argument was that it wasn't up to us to make the culture. If the women hate being in that culture, why don't they leave. People from North Korea hate the culture there so that is why there are so many escapees every year. But there are no escapees from the villages. So it is not up to us to decide if its right or wrong for them, its up to them if its right or wrong.

Reflection #3

The most interesting topic we talked about was all about Okonkwo and his changes. This is a VERY important topic because we rarely see any changes to Okonkwo and his personality. What we talked about specifically was how he was a little "greedy" when he returned home as he didn't let his daughters marry the people from his mother's town just so that when they return, and the daughters are young and beautiful, he would rise in popularity again and might get a chance to rise up again. We also talked about how he started to actually reject his own son because he had a different opinion. This is very important as Nwoye was his eldest son and he was hoping to make him a "great man" and so when he saw Nwoye joining the church, he was filled in rage and so he gave up on him.

Reflection #4

The most interesting topic we talked about today was Okonkwo's character and if it does change or not in this novel. Sadly Okonkwo's character is always dripping with hate and anger. For instance, when he was captured and beaten and was humilitated, he seemed to be a very ignorant man, only seeing what they had done to them and not thinking of what he has done to the church. Although, it is true that what Enoch did to the Egwugwu was bad as basically humiliating someone's culture is a very bad, but that doesn't give you the reason yo basically tear down the church because one of its members did it, rather just punish the member, don't pull in the others as well. Another interesting fact that is interesting for a main protagonist, is that he DOESN'T change at ALL. Usually in a book, the protagonist starts off small but from many experiences, he learns a lot, but in this book, he doesn't change at all and ends up killing himself because he thought that the clan was a shame. In the end, Okonkwo learns nothing and I feel very curious as to why this author chose a main character like Okonkwo.