Parental Relationships in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall...

Parental Relationships in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, and Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood, are two novels that emphasize the complexities of relationships between parents and their children. In Achebe’s story, the protagonist of the novel, Okonkwo, has distant relationships with his children (particularly Nwoye and Ezinma) because their father sees them as inadequate in many ways. Okonkwo has high expectations of his children, especially Nwoye, his eldest son and often finds fault in almost everything he does. Okonkwo resents the fact that the child he feels has the most promise is his daughter Ezinma. Her strength of character is†¦show more content†¦Nwoye, Okonkwo’s oldest son, causes him great concern because Okonkwo sees him as lazy. He sees Nwoye as inadequate to his standards of how a son should be and Achebe illustrates this early on in the novel, â€Å"At any rate, that was how it looked to his father, and he sought to correct that by constant na gging and beating. And so Nwoye was developing into a sad-faced youth,† (10). Okonkwo is so critical of his son’s behavior that he even beats and criticizes Nwoye because he does not like his father’s masculine stories of violence and gore as much as he likes the stories his mother tells him, stories that are more â€Å"female-oriented† in Okonkwo’s eyes. Nwoye seeks his father’s approval so much that he pretends to like the stories his father tells him. As Achebe states, â€Å"...he knew that his father wanted him to be a man. And so he feigned that he no longer cared for women’s stories. And when he did this he saw that his father was pleased, and no longer rebuked him or beat him,† (38). Early in The Joys of Motherhood, Nnu Ego is forced to work so that she can feed herself and her children. The Meers have decided to return to England and Nnaife has found a job aboard a ship heading to Fernando Po. Soldiers tell Nnu Ego that she must leave the compound. With her husband away, Nnu Ego, pregnant with her second son Adim, leaves with her first son Oshia to go earn money for their survival.