Examples Of Sympathy In Things Fall Apart

To feel sympathy for someone is to feel as if you can relate and connect with this person on an emotional level. Sympathy is a powerful feeling, and it can change people’s views of how they see the cruelest people. People usually feel sympathy for someone when they understand what a person is experiencing in their life. In the book, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, the main character, Okonkwo, has his life flipped upside down and fall to pieces when he is exiled out of his village for seven years. During those seven years, Okonkwo has to make a decision about whether he will accept change or reject it. Many of the decisions Okonkwo makes throughout the book reflect his personality and are unforgiving, but as people, we can begin to understand …show more content…
Growing up, Okonkwo saw how his father was seen as a lesser man for not being able to pull his own weight due to the fact that his father was gentle. Okonkwo did everything in his power to not turn out like his lazy father. This caused Okonkwo to hide his emotions from people in fear of being seen as weak or less of a man. The society that Okonkwo had grown up in made him feel that if you were a gentle man who valued idleness over power, you were viewed as meek. Whereas to be a strong man, you had to rule with a fist and be feared. The pressure from his society and the fear he had about turning out like his father, caused Okonkwo to conserve and hide away his emotions. People in society today can relate and connect with how Okonkwo felt about not feeling comfortable opening up to his emotions. People today feel pressure from society to be seen strong and normal all the time. But people have real emotions and feel a thousand different feelings, not just mad or happy emotions. But due to the fact that our society makes it seem that people can only either be happy or mad, many people hide how they really feel. A big percentage of people understand how it feels to not know how to express themselves because they were told that they can’t feel certain emotions, just how Okonkwo felt in his society. To often in this world, people are told that they have to be normal, otherwise they are outcast. Because of this, people can understand why Okonkwo didn’t have an easy time expressing his emotions. People understand that the fear of not fitting in is worse than expressing how someone truly feels. Just as the society Okonkwo grew up in made him feel like he had to be this perfect person, people in today’s society feel the same way which makes them grow this special connection with Okonkwo’s character. This connection is described as sympathy because people