Well I usually listen to music when I read and I'm not sure if that's the best studying tactic, but while I was reading Things Fall Apart, the song "Behind Blue Eyes" by The Who came on. And I started listening to the lyrics of the song and it correlates directly with the novel from Okonkwo's point of view (not literally; nowhere in the novel does it say that he has blue eyes). So here are some relationships between the lyrics of the song and Okonkwo:
"No one knows what it's like / To be the bad man / To be the sad man" - No one else could experience how Okonkwo felt after he accidentally killed Ezeudu's son. He spiraled into a depression because he had to leave his homeland and along with his stature within the clan.
"But my dreams / They aren't as empty / As my conscience seems to be" - During Okonkwo's depression, he barely ate or spoke as if something inside of him was left back in Umuofia. Even though he couldn't go back to Umuofia for 7 years, he started to plan his return only 1 year after arriving in Mbanta and how fast his sons and him will rise back up into Umuofia's elite.
"My love is vengeance / That's never free" - Okonkwo's love was toward his town of Umuofia and the people that live there. He could never take out his vengeance on the missionaries until near the end of the novel because he needed the support of his people to do it along with him.
"No one knows what it's like / To feel these feelings / Like I do / And I blame you" - It appears that Okonkwo has the strongest feelings against the missionaries in the whole tribe based on Achebe's narration. he blames all of the hatred built up inside of him on the white men and their religion.
"No one bites back as hard / On their anger" - Okonkwo is always frustrated with his tribe about fighting the the new religion. He has an enormous amount of anger built up on the inside, but he has to bite back on it until he can gain the support of his tribe.
"When my fist clenches, crack it open / Before I use it and loose my cool" - The entire tribe could probably tell all of the rage Okonkwo was feeling, and most were trying to reason with him and white men to be on equal grounds. They tried to lessen his hatred, but in the end he couldn't control it and killed one of their messengers.
1 comment:
This is a really cool way to look at it! I'm not sure if I would read very well while listening to music, but it would help to make connections such as this one. I really like the last two lines because they really do apply to Okwonkwo and his anger. He seemed to be the most angry one in the tribe and the only one who wanted to result to war. He held in his anger while waiting for the support of the tribe but in the end he couldn't wait any longer, and he lost his cool like in the last line of the song.
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