Everything Sucks (Things Fall Apart)

I titled this blog Everything Sucks. Now, not everything actually sucks, but a whole lot of things in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart do.

An important person in Umuofia really only has to have one specific trait. They need to be masculine. This culture values all aspects of masculinity. To be a leader you have to be both physically and emotionally strong. Physically strong to be a good worker and emotionally strong to hide any sign of emotion or weakness, which are seen as immasculine.

In the same way that this culture values masculinity, they also discourage femininity. To them, femininity is synonymous with weakness, everything that they don't want to be.

This system is not benefiting the woman or men. Boys grow up being pressured to act much older than they are, not show their emotions, and start the family business (Farming) early. Girls grow up believing that they are not worth as much as their brothers, and that they shouldn't have an opinion.

And the cycle continues because both the brothers and the sisters are raised looking up to their parents, and believing that what their parents are doing is always right. So when dad beats mom because dinner wasn't ready on time, the kids think it's normal and good (which it is normal, in this culture.) "Okonkwo ruled his household with a heavy hand. His wives, especially the youngest, lived in perpetual fear of his fiery temper"(Achebe 13).

This type of thinking complicates relationships in Okonkwo's family. Okonkwo cares a lot about his kids being masculine, a feminine son could reflect poorly on his reputation. So when Nwoye shows signs of liking feminine things, like stories, Okonkwo is scared."Okonkwo was popularly called the 'Roaring Flame.' As he looked into the log fire he recalled the name. He was a flaming fire. How then could he have begotten a son like Nwoye, degenerate and effeminate? Perhaps he was not his son. No! he could not be. His wife had played him false. He would teach her! But Nwoye resembled his grandfather, Unoka, who was Okonkwo's father. He pushed the thought out of his mind. He, Okonkwo, was called a flaming fire. How could he have begotten a woman for a son"(153)?

Okonkwo eventually teaches Nwoye to be more masculine. Nwoye is scared of his father, but he is also eager to please him so he does what Okonkwo wants him to."Nothing pleased Nwoye now more than to be sent for by his mother or another of his father's wives to do one of those difficult and masculine tasks in the home, like splitting wood or pounding food. On receiving such a message through a younger brother or sister, Nwoye would feign annoyance and grumble aloud about women and their troubles"(52).

On the other side of the spectrum is Okonkwo's daughter, Ezinma. Ezinma is not a perfectly feminine girl, but her father likes her more than he tries to let on. He remarks that he wishes she would have been a boy. He says that she has 'a good spirit' and he favors her over Nwoye. I wonder what he thinks would be different if she were a boy, he wishes she were so badly. Everything about her is good, except for the fact that she is a girl.

The worst thing isn't the culture itself, it's the way it correlates to real life, society outside of the book. Masculinity and femininity still exist in real life and they are valued in almost exactly the same way as they are in the book. In both places masculinity is deemed better.

When a woman wants to be taken seriously, like at work, she wears more masculine clothes. Blazers for women are supposed to look like suits that men wear. In the 80's shoulder pads were popular, broadening your shoulders would make you look more masculine and men would, in theory, take you more seriously. When a women wants to be taken seriously, she makes herself look like a man.

We teach our children to value everything masculine. We encourage our sons to play football and like monster trucks. When little Suzy asks if she can play baseball this year we rejoice because she isn't so girly, she's not afraid to get dirty. But when little Parker wants to take dance class we scold him because that's only for girls! Besides, what would the neighbors think?

One day in class we were looking at slides projected on the wall. A student raised his hand to ask why all the pronouns on the slide were she's instead of he's. Now, I could totally be misinterpreting this, but it seemed like he was so used to he being the default that he was surprised when the slide said she instead. It's not his fault, it's the world we live in, but it was still slightly surprising that he found it so unnatural to be using a feminine pronoun.

Another day, I heard a brother and sister fighting, both elementary schoolers. I don't remember what the argument was about but it was heated and the brother was running out of comebacks. So he used this one. "Yeah well... men are superior to woman!" The sister had nothing to say. She accepted the statement like it was true and there was nothing she could do about it.

These kids had been taught, whether their parents were conscious of it or not, that masculinity was somehow definitively above femininity.

I'm not saying that this is how people are 100% of the time, it's not. I'm also not saying that this is the biggest problem in the world right now and that everyone needs to pay attention to it. But these ideas are still etched into our own culture so much that we don't even really notice it anymore.

Half of the Earth's population is female, femininity is everywhere, as is masculinity. I don't think femininity is going away anytime soon so maybe we can just accept it as a part of our culture.


*I know that I am privileged and that I am undoubtedly biased, but hopefully this wasn't too offensive/ painfully ignorant/ rant-ish. Yay!