Description
Choose ONE of the questions that you explored in your online Discussion of Things Fall Apart. You can select the question that you answered on the Discussion, or you can select a new question. The purpose of the assignment will be to continue developing your analysis in order to write a longer, more thoughtful analysis of the novel. You will have two goals for this paper: 1) conduct a close reading of the novel based upon the question chosen and 2) do research to support your argument. Here are the questions:
1. According to the novel, how does the Ibo culture, and Okonkwo specifically, divide up qualities based on gender, especially strength vs. weakness? Analyze a specific example from the novel to show how gender is applied to concepts other than a person’s biological sex.
2. Look up the word hubris. What does it mean and how does it apply to Okonkwo? Explain the significance of hubris in this novel.
3. Do you know what locusts usually represent in literature? If not, look it up. Now, relate the significance of locusts to this novel. In what way are the locusts in the novel foreshadowing and perhaps ironic. What is their significance?
4. How does the last paragraph in the novel change our entire understanding of the whole story? In effect, what does that paragraph, like colonialism, do to the Ibo people?
