Some Things Never Change

After reading the novel entitled Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, I realized that some things never change especially the domination of women by a male figure. The protagonist, Okonkwo strives to be the epitomy of masculinity by being really ignorant and selfish in my opinion. We learn that their are many influences in his life that make him act the way he acts, but his opinions seems to be misguided, and chavinistic. His relationship with his father caused his violent behavior because many a times he was not able to put food on the table for Okonkwo, and siblings. Okonkwo saw this as being weak and feminine. What!?! This reason is just unbelievable, and unacceptable. Give a woman a chance, and you'll see she would definitely have something on the table at the end of the day. Then the narrator goes further by saying that a man who has not taken any of the expensive, prestige-indicating title is called a agbala, which means woman. Honestly, this inferiority of woman is driving me nuts, thank God I'm not living in this clan, and I am in a society where Kimora Lee is the owner of the huge BabyPhat business empire, and Hilary Clinton, a woman maybe the next President. In addition, Okonkwo associated masculinty with being abusive to his wives, and children, and often blocks off his sentiments. In my opinion, look at Tom Cruise, he professed his love for Katie Holmes on national television by jumping on the sofa on Oprah's talk show, and this didn't make him less of a man. And luckily there wasn't any child care services back then because Oknokwo,"the big MAN on campus" would have been in a lot of legal troubles for assaulting his kids. Above all, this just goes to show that Okonkwo has a notion that men are stronger than women, which in my opinion (pisses me off), really irritates me.