Daddy Issues

"As Okwonko sat in his hut that night, gazing into a log fire, he thought over the matter. A sudden fury rose within him and he felt a strong desire to take up his machete, go to [Nwoye] and wipe out the entire vile and miscreant gang. But on further thought he told himself that Nwoye was not worth fighting for. Why, he cried in his heart, should he, Okwonko, of all people, be cursed with such a son? He saw clearly in it the finger of his personal god or chi. For how else could he explain his great misfortune and exile and now his despicable son's behavior? Now that he had time to think of it, his son's crime stood out in its stark enormity. To abandon the gods of one's father and go about with a lot of effeminate men clucking like old hens was the very depth of abomination. Suppose when he died al him male children decided to follow Nwoye's steps and abandon their ancestors? Okwonko felt a cold shudder run through him at the terrible prospect, like the prospect of annihilation. He saw himself and his fathers crowding round their ancestral shrine waiting in vain for worship and sacrifice and finding nothing but ashes of bygone days, and his children the while praying to the white man's god. If such a thing were ever to happen, he, Okwonko, would wipe them off the face of the earth." (152-153).

This passage comes just after Okwonko discovers that his eldest son, Nwoye, has joined the Christian missionaries. Okwonko abhors the action and dismissed his son from the family because he has betrayed their customs and beliefs. This passage speaks of Okwonko's personal insecurities and fears, and his slightly hypocritical expectation of familial loyalty.

Okwonko is an incredibly insecure man. His greatest fear is failure, and he strives to be strong, noteworthy, and successful. The betrayal of Nwoye, his son, is a bitter one; Nwoye has always been a disappointment to Okwonko because he is sometimes weak and lazy, but Okwonko always expected that if he pushed his son hard enough then he would succeed in shaping him into a man. This event in the book marks a shift in Okwonko's thought patterns -- we actually see his thoughts, which means that he is finally emotionally moved enough to have such drastic thoughts. Everything that he is thinking concerns his personal failure. He takes this betrayal as an affront to his honor. He "clearly" sees that this is the fault of "his personal god or chi," which is a way of blaming his soul and his destiny. He would take out his anger and panic on his son, and he threatens to "wipe out the entire vile and miscreant gang" of Christian converts, but he does not blame his son. He sees this as a personal failure, caused by his inherent weakness.

This weakness the Okwonko perceives inside himself is because of Unoka, his father. Okwonko has spent his entire life running from his father's image, so every affront to his own dignity causes him to see his father within himself. Yet Okwonko condemns Nwoye for "abandon[ing] the gods of [his] father" and therefore abandoning his own fathers, despite the fact that Okwonko abandoned his own father. I believe that Okwonko's greatest fear is, in fact, mimicking his father's life: being so weak that his own son abandons him. Every weakness in Okwonko is a weakness given to him by Unoka, and therefore the response by everyone around Okwonko could be the same as Okwonko's response to his father. And since the world has forgotten Unoka, Okwonko is terrified of being forgotten, especially by his own sons. He describes the horror of waiting to be prayed to as an ancestor and receiving no honor from his sons, showing his fear of leaving no impact on the world.

This all explains Okwonko's actions throughout the novel. His fears of weakness, insignificance, and dishonor lead to violence, so that he can seem strong, important, and honorable to the outside world and to himself. Okwonko's fears come from his hatred of his father and his determination to be different from him. These fears lead nowhere for Okwonko except deeper into anxiety and violence.