Pages 44-82

Through this reading I recognized the alternating pattern of failures and successes in a generation. Okonkwo's father, Unoka, was an awful person in the eyes of this civilization. He was in debt to everyone that was ever stupid enough to lend him money. Although he was a failure, his son Okonkwo became largely successful. His success began when he threw "the Cat." According to this society, a measure of strength such as this proves a citizen's success. But then, following the alternating pattern, Okonkwo fathered a child whom, in his eyes, is a bad son. So bad, in fact, that Okonkwo wishes that Nwoye was a daughter because he acts more like a woman should rather than a man. In Umuofia calling a man a woman, or anything to that degree, is a very grave insult indeed. It is especially serious in Okonkwo's eyes because his father, of whom Okonkwo is very ashamed of, was frequently called a woman.

This alternating theme of success can very often be held true to any society. Many people try to do anything but be their parents. Through this, they become not necessarily failures, but certainly vastly different people. The term failure or success, however, falls in the eyes of the present society. For example in Things Fall Apart, how the men that acted "womanly" were regarded as failures.

This only leads into the clear theme of a patriarchal society. Throughout what I have read so far in the novel, women are just becoming more and more inferior. By page 69, they disregard other cultures that are female dominant as insane. When told that there are some cultures in which a woman and her family own the children, as opposed to the father and his family, Machi is flabbergasted. He replies saying that it "cannot be...you might as well say that the woman lies on top of the man when they are making the children." Given that a) I'm a woman and b) I live in the 21st century, my views are completely biased. It was a completely different time back then, but it is still difficult to look back on this story without hindsight. Hindsight is, after all, 20-20.