Nwoye's Life Changing Experience

Nwoye’s Life Changing Experience

“Violent statements and threats cannot provide a solution to the problem. They can only exacerbate feeling and make a clash of forces inevitable,” (Stafford Cripps). Nwoye had his sense of identity challenged and even changed by the Western culture. He started out by following in his father’s footsteps. Then when the British colonist showed up and started sharing their ideas, he changed. The British ideas caused Nwoye to leave his family behind and be with the British. Nwoye learned under the guidance of his father ,Okonkwo. Nwoye was deeply influenced by his father, as his father ruled with a heavy hand, showing any emotions would be a sign of weakness. So when his father shot the son of Ezeudu, that caused …show more content…
Ikemefuna was treated the same way Nwoye was, with a heavy hand. This brought them closer together to even call each other brothers. “As for the boy, he belonged to the clan as a whole, and there was no hurry to decide his fate (9).” Ikemefuna was just a sacrifice because, Mbaino killed one of Nwoye’s people. Neither Nwoye or Ikemefuna knew that though, they just lived life normally. “His eldest son, Nwoye, and Ikemefuna helped him by fetching the yams in long baskets from the barn and in counting the prepared seeds in groups of four hundred (23).” Nwoye and Ikemefuna did brotherly things together, so they kept growing closer to each other making everything worse when the clan decided to sacrifice him. “Ikemefuna had begun to feel like a member of Okonkwo's family. He still thought about his mother and his three-year-old sister, and he had moments of sadness and depression But he and Nwoye had become so deeply attached to each other that such moments became less frequent and less poignant (25).” The more time they spent together the closer they got. He started to think of them as his real family and less about his real family. Nwoye and Ikemefuna considered each other brothers. “Later in the day he called Ikemefuna and told him that he was to be taken home the next day. Nwoye overheard it and burst into tears, whereupon his father beat him heavily. As for Ikemefuna, he was at a loss. His own home had gradually become very faint and distant (41).” Nwoye was broken when he heard about Ikemefuna leaving. His father just beat him for it not helping his situation any. He didn’t know they were going to kill him but he had that faint feeling when his father returned that they did, leading to him trusting his father