Suicide In Mrs. Dalloway And Things Fall Apart

In the novels, Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf and, Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe both authors push their characters into committing horrendous actions that are shunned by the English people and the indigenous Umuofia people. The suicides represent Septimus and Okonkwo's desperate attempts to free themselves from the pressures of their believed failed societies. Woolf uses Septimus traumatic experience as a soldier in WWI as a means to show that at a societal level, the British failed their people for their inability to properly help returning soldiers suffering from shell shock. Her use of repetition of the window effectively dramatizes Septimus feelings of entrapment and eagerness to escape his own reality. Thus, Woolf is able to …show more content…
Throughout the novel, Okonkwo suffered from identity crisis. His fear of appearing like his failed father drove him to take on a macho persona that always needed to be in control. This is seen when he did not wish to possess any perceived female characteristics. The first example is when Okonkwo viciously beats his wife. The text states, "[h]e walked back to his obi to await Ojiugo's return. And when she returned he beat her very heavily. In his anger he had forgotten that it was the Week of Peace...His first two wives ran out in great alarm pleading with him that it was the sacred week. But Okonkwo was not the man to stop beating somebody half-way through, not even for fear of a goddess” (32). The above quote shows that in his attempt to prove that he was a dominant male who kept his wife in a submissive position, he completely violated his culture's belief that everyone had to maintain peace for a week. One thing the reader learns from this quote is that Okonkwo is more afraid of people thinking he is weak than being punished by a deity. Thus, Achebe wants the reader to understand that everything Okonkwo does is for his own