In Umuofia, a city in the novel Things Fall Apart, masculinity is highly regarded as a moral. It’s comparable with words such as courage and power, and with just about any other quality that proves a person in being self-reliant. Actually, it’s considered an insult if a man is called an agbala, a woman. In the novel it says, “no matter how prosperous a man was, if he was unable to rule his women and his children he was not really a man”. There is a sharp contrast between femininity and masculinity – being, women are to be controlled or the followers where as the men were the controllers or leaders. Okonkwo, an admired and respected person in Umuofia, is the sketching of power and manliness. His father was considered an agbala with no accomplishments.
