Name: Rida Rehan

Candidate Number: 0166

Centre Number: SG085
Centre Name: UWCSEA East
Character: Okonkwo
Moment (Chapter Reference): Chapter 25 - Okonkwo walking to the tree before killing
himself
Works Cited: Achebe, Chinua, Things Fall Apart, New York: Anchor, 1994, Print.
Word Count: 612

I am a warlord who is both violent and brave. Not only that, but I am also a very
successful and wealthy businessman, which has given me the compound that I
surround myself with. Others believe that I am a fierce warrior and a successful farmer
of yams, which are known to be the manliest crop, As I look around the compound and
look back on how I keep a heavy hand on my household since people can only learn
and will only learn from violence. I dislike emotion or sentiment as it is soft the only
emotion of substance and approval is anger. I have spent my entire life trying to escape
my father’s shadow, and I have successfully done so as I have become very wealthy
and have earned respect from the people of Umuofia, unlike my father, but now they
may look at me the same as they did my father as I walk with shame in my compound
being everything but a yam.

I, Okonkwo am described as a great wrestler and a fierce warrior. Unoka, my deceased

father, who I am soon going to meet, was a weak man who let his sloth and laziness
prevent him from growing or harvesting any crops., My father had purchased gourds of
palm wine, called round his neighbors, and made merry instead of buying crops with
any money he had). He embarrassed us all and made me live through his shameful
legacy because he owed a lot of money to his neighbors. This behavior is everything I
detest, Nwoye reminds me of my father, weak and embarrassing. His whole existence
was governed by fear of failure and weakness... it was the fear of himself, lest he is
found to resemble his father). the desire for toughness is something Nwoye deeply
lacks, Nwoye, has incipient laziness he runs away to those missionaries who have
turned Umuofia into nothing, he ran away like the coward he is just like my father. My
own kinsmen will not combat the missionaries’ injustices, we have grown weak in
my exile, and have forgotten everything we are.

When coming back to Umuofia, I expect that the clan might have replaced me and
filled other people in for my former roles, but what I didn’t expect was for the whole
village to change. We Umuofians used to be warriors, violent, and wardriven people. In
my exile Umuofians have simply become cowards, like Unoka. we would’ve driven
these missionaries out of Umuofia a long time ago and never let them be a locust.
Umuofians would never be suffering like this, only Chukwu would be preached in
Umuofia, not Christianity, or any other things these outsiders are preaching. We
should’ve been fighting against them with deadly force, they must know how an
Umuofian goes to war, like fire. I expected people to be willing and able to fight within a
moment’s notice, but instead, people are entertaining their arrival in Umuofia, and the
weak osu fall first.

As I walk towards the back of my compound, l think of Ikemefuna and how he was the
son I wanted, instead of Nwoye who is an innocent child, he is also very sensitive to
his surroundings and is baffled by the seemingly arbitrary cruelties being committed
around him, while Ikemefuna is what a son is meant to be, strong and brave, not afraid
of conflict, a true Umuofian whose fate was sealed by me, As it would make me a
woman, weak. But that would not matter now as I am committing the most feminine
crime of all, filling my body with sin and laying next to everything I despise, Unoka.

GLOSSARY:
Osu - outcast. Having been dedicated to a god, the osu was taboo and was not allowed to
mix with the freeborn in any way.