Okonkwo is Really Falling Apart

Things are really “falling apart” for Okonkwo in the novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Okonkwo is a famous wrestler and great warrior in his village, Umuofia, but in spite of recent events he is “an exile, condemned for seven years to live in a strange land” (Achebe 133). This punishment comes as a result of him accidentally killing someone while firing his weapon in commemoration of another great warrior who recently died. Now Okonkwo is fleeing to his motherland with his wives and children and his life begins to disintegrate.

In Umuofia, Okonkwo was a hardworking man who had great wealth and possessed titles, but after being banished we find that “work no longer had the pleasure for him it used to have (Achebe 131). Throughout his life Okonkwo has worked hard so that he would not be an unsuccessful man as his father was, but now it seems as though he has accepted defeat. Work was such a large part of him that without his great work ethic he will crumble. His family needs him in order to survive and be able to return home in seven years but, Okonkwo is broken and without him things are sure to fall apart.

While Okonkwo has been in exile, Christian missionaries have now come to his new village in hopes of spreading the word of god and converting the people of the village. The people of the village are interested but none more than Nwoye, Okonkwo’s son who is drawn to the new religion. Nwoye was haunted by the “question of the twins crying in the brush and the question of Ikemfuna who was killed” (Achebe 147). These issues drew Nwoye into the religion ,and before long he left his family and joined the missionaries. Not only is Okonkwo himself falling apart but his family is as well.

In these past few chapters Okonkwo has suffered a great deal. His life has been in utter chaos. He has given up everything he has spent his entire life working for. By being exiled Okonkwo has lost his home, titles, and most importantly his work ethic. Okonkwo is certainly not the man he once was ,but is now broken and crumbling into pieces.

Creatively Killing Creativity

For this blog post we were asked to discuss a ted talk we were interested in. I typed in “popular ted talk’s” and I found “Sir Ken Robinson: Do Schools Kill Creativity?” to have the most views and decided it must be important.
Take a look and see how interesting it really is…

In this video he passionately talks about how the public education system does not value creativity as it does other subjects such as language and math. In his speech he goes on to discuss how we are born with creativity but as we mature we “grow out of it.”
Robinson defines creativity as ideas with value and importance. He says the body has been completely disregarded and the education system now only focuses on one region of our brains. I found it interesting when he said that creativity is now just as important as literacy. While I do think creativity is important, I cannot bring myself to agree with him. I feel that today’s standards require much more of a person that it did just a few years ago, from getting into a decent collage to getting a job, everything is changing. He even says how we students are told not to think about becoming an artist or musician because “there is no job in that” and there really are not many.  Because of this fact I find that the stress on subjects such as mathematics and English to be necessary.
I do think that arts such as dance and theater are important and if someone is truly passionate about it, I believe they should go after their dream, but I, personally am not interested in such arts. My high school does a great job of providing me with the opportunity to find my passion and actually embrace creativity. My school has certainly not killed my creativity but rather, inspired me to be more creative. Therefore, while Robison did bring up some fascinating facts and thoughts I must disagree with him when it comes to schools destroying our creativity.
While looking around I found this portion of a ted talk and I thought it was really interesting. It is about a way to communicate to all audiences all across the world. Check it out it.