Okonkwo Masculinity

Throughout history, men have had a strange sense of what it is to be a man. Masculinity has always been a fragile thing made of specific thoughts and actions. If someone does not do or think those specific manly things, they are not a man. Okonkwo from Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe, has a very strict idea of what a man is.

Okonkwo strove all his life to gain a title. Okonkwo believes that a title is a necessary thing to be considered a man. He even goes so far as to call a title-less man a woman. “The man who had contradicted him had no titles. That was why he had called him a woman.” (4.1) If being called a woman in Umofia is powerful enough to “kill a man's spirit,” then masculinity is almost a requirement in the clan, and to Okonkwo, men who do not have titles do not work hard and are effeminate.
Growing a large amount of a difficult crop like yams earns a man respect in the community. Okonkwo believes that the “Yam [stands] for manliness, and he who could feed his family on yams from one gravest to another was a very great man indeed.” (4.32) Having suffered great embarrassment from his effeminate father, Okonkwo will not let his sons suffer the same. He pushes them and crushes their spirits in order to teach them how to properly grow the difficult yam so that they may become men