Question

45 POINTS!!! URGENT!!! PLEASE!!! MUST FINISH CLASS TODAY!!! 500 words. Pick a theme from Things Fall Apart and explore how the author develops that theme through characterization, imagery, symbolism, or the use of irony. Support your argument with specific examples from the text. (not required to do the whole thing just start it off)

Answer 1

Hi!

The themes of any story are always pretty interesting to explore, so, whats the theme of this book? Well there are a lot of them in my opinion. Some of them would be,

- Fear

- Gender

-Family

-Religion and Sin

-Fate

-Free Will

So, each of these themes are pretty different from each other, and you might wonder how an author could possibly fit all of those into one book? And honestly thats probably what makes it such a good book. I would say to combine all of these, the main theme would be Society or Reality. In any book the theme is shaped by the imager, metaphors and symbolism used. In the outsiders, ponyboy explains his hatred for those with green eyes, even while saying he has green eyes. Near the end of the book, he looks at Cherry, and realizes her eyes are green. This made him realize that the color of their eyes dont decide who they are. Green eyes are the theme of the book, but without the imagery, and symbolism laced with his hatred of green eyes, the theme of the book... wouldn't be the theme at all! It wouldn't have any components of it that really made someone feel its presence throughout the book.

In the book, Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo uses the ash of a fire as a symbol of the unmasculine side of men and emasculation. He compares his own son to Ash, a jab at him and he calls the mail men ashy-buttocks, not only a reference to their shorts but to their masculinity. Okonkwo's obsession with masculinity is something that people in society today can relate to, and if you aren't something society considers it, then you are stripped of your masculinity and you are taunted and called names, in this case it would be Ash. The theme of society is prevalent among these different symbols, and imagery. In short, it would be difficult to pinpoint the theme of a book without the other literary devices to help us. 

Hope I Helped!