The characterisation of Okonkwo in 'Things Fall Apart'

In his counter-colonial narrative, Chinua Achebe chooses a protagonist named Okonko, who can also be labeled a tragic hero. This narrative, titled 'Things Fall Apart' is about the colonisation of the Igbo people. Okonkwo is depicted as a character who is immensely powerful, and the ideal man from the Igbo culture. As a teen, Okonkwo gains fame and popularity by throwing Cat, one of the best wrestlers of the time. As he gets older, he starts going to wars. He is said to have brought back five heads from the wars that he had fought in. He is then kicked out of Umofia, his native village, for mistakenly killing a fellow clansman. Okonknwo then flees to take refuge in his motherland, where he prepares to come back in style to Umofia. He planned what he was going to do once he got back, but unfortunately when he did, Umofia had been completely changed.

All the men had seemingly become like 'women', and the Christian missionaries were taking over. The youth had gone to schools in search of better job opportunities. Okonkwo then began to realise the gradual destruction of the society he had worked so hard to become powerful in. Eventually, Okonkwo realises that the organic and integrated society he liver in as a child had now become a hapless system of chaos. Not bring able to handle all this, he had little thought but to kill himself. Achebe has presented the protagonist, Okonkwo, as a tragic hero who symbolises Igbo society himself. The frictional and uncertain nature of Okonkwo is attributed to the culture, which sometimes contradicts itself. In an already delicate structure of society, further intervention by the colonial powers leads to the death of Okonkwo, symbolising the demise of the Igbo culture.

The varying contexts that the book is set in leads to various themes. As mentioned above, the abandoning of the Igbo culture by the youth and the outcasts provides a theme of change, struggle and tradition. The youth of the village thought a lot provoked them to join the missionaries. Even though they had to struggle and leave their families, the youth and outcasts prevailed in leaving the Igbo culture. This ensued a chaos in the Igbo community that was now unstoppable. Another theme is that of the varying interpretations of masculinity. Okonkwo considered masculinity to be something different. If a person wasn't powerful and intimidating, he was considered effeminate in Okonkwo's eyes. Similar situations lead to the development of a lot of other themes, all of which cannot be explored in the length of this blog post.

Reflection on the discussion of 'An African Voice'

Today, in class, we had a discussion on the historical context of an African Voice. We talked about how the story of 'Things Fall Apart' related to a lot of our personal lives. When we talked about the colonization of Igboland, I found that it was similar to the colonization of our countries. In India, there was a similar take-over of power. This lead to another discussion of the current ideas of some people in the USA. Some people in Southern USA still hold the same ideas of coloured people being 'slaves' and not equal to everyone else. This surprises me, as we've come so far into the future since the colonial times, but the concepts of  some false stereotypes and discrimination have still not been let go. After a lot of discussion about this, I found my initial assumptions about the Western world as a completely fair society proven wrong, but I also got to learn about various cultures and how 'Things fall apart' is a book that can be related to by almost anyone.

Paper 1 Analysis: Steve Jobs Commencement Address at Stanford

Introduction:

The following is an analysis of Steve Jobs' 2005 Commencement Address at Stanford. The founder of  Apple and Pixar addressed the graduating class at Stanford in 2005. Even though the address was not very significant to any particular subject, it still does a very effective job at achieving its objective. How it does this is looked into in the following Paper 1 style textual analysis.

Analysis:

The given text is an address by Steven Paul Jobs to the graduating seniors at Stanford University. Steve Jobs, being a skilled orator, manages to effectively connect with the students. This analysis will explore how he uses rhetorical and literary techniques in combination with language to convey many ideas that he wants the audience to implement in their everyday life.

The target audience here are the students at Stanford University. This can be seen from the words 'your commencement from one of the finest universities' in the opening sentence. The sentences "I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. " shows that the speech is geared towards the senior graduating from college. The purpose of the address was to discuss the future of the students who were graduating in order to keep up their success. The narration of the three stories further indicated the purpose of the address, which was to convince the graduates that the their thirst for knowledge should be unquenchable.

In the address, Jobs talks about three situations that he had to go through as a person. The first one was about connecting the dots, and rising to greatness. The second story was about love and loss, and how he learned to cope with them. Capping off the speech, the third story was about death, and how he narrowly managed to survive cancer. Merging the themes of life, growth and death, the address transcends many of it's cut-and-paste counterparts. By structuring his speech in such a way, Jobs was able to establish a deeper connection with the audience. The graduates knew that they would go through the three stages mentioned in the address in the same order, utilising pathos to maximise  the influence of the speech.

The tone of the speech does not remain constant throughout. It starts off being instructional, when Steve Jobs gives the audience a background of himself, and his childhood, as he says "It started before I was born". When he talks about connecting the dots, the speech becomes a bit preachy. This is because Jobs talks about how he himself trusted his gut feeling to connect the dots in the future which immensely helped him to establish himself. He is now advising the graduates, which can be seen through the lines:"Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backward 10 years later..... Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future." Also, the speech is humorous at times, an example of which is "... since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them..". When Jobs talks about death the address becomes a bit depressing, but even in the face of inevitable death, Jobs remained optimistic, which is reflected in the lines "Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.". The combination of humour,depression,preachiness and optimism in this speech builds up a reflective mood. 

This reflective mood then helps to establish a feeling of legitimacy in the speech, hence utilising logos and pathos.  The audience knows that what they're being told has actually happened, and further connects with them. Further, how Steve Jobs describes himself- as a college dropout who has established the biggest tech and animation company in the world utilises ethos in order to establish himself as a very hard working and dedicated person. This ultimately proves to the audience that Jobs is a person who is well overly-qualified to address them, utilising ethos. The use of the personal pronouns helps to engage the audience. For example, "... you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward....  You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever..". Personal pronouns here help Jobs to achieve his objective of engaging the graduates on a personal level, utilising pathos.  There is also an example of hypophora in this address. In the beginning, Jobs asks the question-"So why did I drop out?". This helps in order to build the speech and develop new ideas effectively and in an organised manner. One of the most powerful literary devices used in this speech is  sententia. By saying "Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish" at the end of the address, Jobs effectively concludes all his ideas in four words. The length of the sententia will help the saying to stick with audience.

In conclusion, this speech only furthers Steve's reputation as a skilled orator. Analysing the structure makes one aware of its importance in this address. By looking at the the tone, mood and literary devices used in the address, it can be seen how Jobs has used rhetoric along with language to his advantage while conveying many ideas.