You might as well say that the woman lies on top of the man when they are making the children.

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Okonkwo believes in traditional gender roles, and it pains him that his son Nwoye is not more aggressive like he is.

As a result, its revealing that he expresses the wish that his daughter Ezinma were a boyfrom this we know how fond he is of her.

Additionally, in a meeting towards the very beginning of the book, Okonkwo insults a man without title by calling him a woman, demonstrating how much masculinity is valued when ranking those in Umuofia society.

Ultimately, though, Okonkwos adherence to masculinity and aggression leads to his fall in societyhe becomes brittle and unable to bend with the changes taking place in his clan.

In keeping with this principle of masculinity, Okonkwo forces himself to kill his own surrogate son, murder the white man against his better judgment, and hang himself before a punishment can be imposed by others.

Okonkwos aggression makes him weak in the endit leaves him with no room to maneuver against the more subtle ways of the white man.

Nwoye struggles with this idea of masculinity, as he wants to please his father by being aggressive and traditional, but ultimately, hes repelled by the violence in Umuofia rituals and joins the Christians.

Nwoyes departure can also be linked to this idea from Okonkwos uncle, Uchendu, after the family is exiled from Umuofia: Its true that a child belongs to its father.

But when a father beats his child, it seeks sympathy in its mothers hut.

Likewise, after being beaten by his father, Nwoye leaves to seek solace in the more feminine and seemingly gentle Christian religion.

The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Masculinity appears in each chapter of Things Fall Apart.

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Below you will find the important quotes in Things Fall Apart related to the theme of Masculinity.

In Umuofias latest war he was the first to bring home a human head.

That was how Okonkwo first came to know that agbala was not only another name for a woman, it could also mean a man who had taken no title.

And so Okonkwo was ruled by one passion to hate everything that his father Unoka had loved.

One of those things was gentleness and another was idleness.

But he was not the man to go about telling his neighbors that he was in error.

I have even heard that in some tribes a mans children belong to his wife and her family.

Things Fall Apart Litcharts