"With a father like Unoka, Okokwo did not have the start in life which many young men had. He neither inherited a barn nor a title, nor even a young wife. But in spite of these disadvantages, he had begun even in his father's lifetime to lay the foundations of a prosperous future. It was slow and painful. But he threw himself into it like one possessed. And indeed he was possessed by the fear of his father's contemptible life and shameful death." (Page 18)
This passage follows the information detailing Unoka's life and death and how Okokwo viewed his father. Unoka was viewed by many as a weak, lazy, and unfocused individual that was bad with money and placed a great importance on conversation and learning rather than financial security. This passage, however, analyzes Okokwo and how his father shaped him through these unfortunate circumstances.
The diction used in this passage aids in conveying the immense troubles that Okokwo went through to try to ensure he would not end up like his father in any possible way. Words describing his intensity in his work, such as "threw himself", and acting as if he was "possessed" demonstrate how serious he was when trying to lay out a future for himself disconnected from his father. Achebe uses words to describe this process such as "slow and painful" to emphasize the struggle Okokwo went through to accomplish his goals.
Another major device used in this passage is the foreshadowing of Okokwo's "prosperous future". Achebe works diligently to make it clear to the reader that Okokwo will be successful with shaping his future. Later on in the story, it is revealed that Okokwo is one of the more respected and feared individuals of their community. He has multiple wives and children with all of them and he also has been successful with his yams where his father was not. Achebe does well to convey these ideas to his readers and suggest that Okokwo's life will be just as he hoped it would.
This post does a nice job of analyzing the text of the poem. What's missing is further explanation as to what this means, especially in the second paragraph; an additional sentence or two would bring the analysis of Achebe's diction around to contextualizing the meaning behind the words. The third paragraph does a better job of tying the passage into the rest of the novel. This post made me think about the words used, so thank you!
ReplyDeleteYou do a great job of analyzing Achebe's diction in this post. Your second paragraph is strong. As Jess said, your third paragraph does a great job of not limiting your analysis to a specific instance. There's some information in the paragraph about Umuofian society that could also use some analysis, and it would interesting to hear about that as well. Nice post!
ReplyDelete