Nwoye Manliness Analysis

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Pages: 3

Nwoye’s Battle for Manliness

Nwoye has a hard time balancing whether he should follow his father’s definition of manliness or express his own definition of manliness. When the new culture came to the clan it helped him embrace himself and showed a positive outlook on colonialism. Nwoye started out in the novel as weak and sensitive, but the cultural collision helped him grow and realize that it was time for him to find a place that he would fit in and where he doesn’t have to be afraid of Okonkwo anymore. Nwoye’s change in sense of identity was not only for him to escape his father, but to escape the Ibo culture as a whole. Ultimately, Nwoye didn’t conform by the Ibo culture, but he was able to fit in and find a way into the new culture.
Nwoye’s sense of identity was challenged when the British arrived because his fear of his father. Although he was attracted to the new faith immediately he didn’t want his father to find out and hurt him. “He dared not go too near the missionaries for fear of his
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“The hymn about brothers who sat in darkness and in fear seemed to answer a vague and persistent question that haunted his young soul--the question of the twins crying in the bush and the question of Ikemefuna who was killed. He felt a relief within as the hymn poured into his parched soul. The words of the hymn were like the drops of frozen rain melting on the dry palate of the panting earth. Nwoye's callow mind was greatly puzzled.” (110) This supports my claim because he was traumatized by the twins in the forest crying and when Okonkwo murders Ikemefuna because he was a sacrifice. He didn’t understand the logic of the Trinity but it helped give him a better understanding and that is what pulled him away from the Ibo customs and closer to