#1 How The Center Is made To Hold in Things Fall Apart by Neil Ten Kortenaar
Thesis: “How does Achebe establish his narrative authority when writing about a period more that fifty years in the past and more particularly about a world view that has lost its original integrity?” para 1
Main Points:
- The last chapter’s change of narration
- His humanization of characters
- 3rd person Omniscient affect
- Foil characters
- African vs. European
- Cultural insight vs. Objective insight
- Writing Techniques
#2 Women in Achebe’s World: A Womanist Critique by Rose Ure Mezu
Thesis:”Having been the first, so to speak, to scale the top of the Iroko, this eagle, Achebe, and other male eaglets after him, argueably have appropriated all that they have found there. This chapter will explore what is left for female eagles.”
Main Points:
- Traditional cultural approach to women
- Lack of female influence
- Chastity and virginity in Things Fall Apart
- Changing vision of women
- Modern feminism and womanism
- Women liberation
Chapter 25
This chapter is written more from the perspective of the district commissioner. The DC and his guards travel to Okonkwo’s hut after he has murdered the messenger. When The DC arrives there he finds Obierika and other elders from the village. When he asks where Oknonwo is he threatens to take the men to jail if they don’t deliver Okonkwo. The men lead them to where Ononkwo hung himself. From here the DC considers his options for including Okonkwo in a book he is writing of a history of Africa. The question is whether to devote a paragraph or a chapter to his. This is insulting to the reader. We have just spent an entire book learing about Okonkwo and coming to understand and respect this charecter, and now this white man wants to cast him off as nothing but a talking point and an animal. The DC’s book is to be a history but the way he writes it will not be a true history but an obscenely bias one.
Chapter 19
In this chapter Okonkwo is preparing to return to Umofia from Mbanta after his seven years of exile is up. As he finishes up his last harvest he tells his wives to prepare a feast for the people of his motherland to thank them for thier hopitality. Ekwefi is put in charge of the cassava and Okonkwo will prepare the meat and yams. The other women will prepare various other things. At the feast the kola nut ceremonie was performed and Okonkwo thanked the people for thier hospitality. Then an old man rose to honor Okonkwo with a speech.
The last speech given seems very omonous, is the old man’s forshadowing something in Umofia?
Why do Ekwefi and Okonkwo fight over the number of goats?
The woman’s suffragist movement is an important event in the history of politics. When women fought for the right to vote they were able to come together, black and white, as well as poor and rich. Historian Victoria Bissell Brown said it best when she said, “We tend to think of suffrage as an “on-off” switch. Women didn’t have the vote, then women did have the vote in 1920. The story is quite different.”(PBS para. 1)
I really liked this quote from Victoria Bissell Brown. I found it in one of my sources and decided to end my paper with it. Before I wrote this research paper this idea was true to me. Obviously I knew that women fought for the right to vote but I didn’t realize how long it actually took, or how much theses women gave up and suffered for thier right. The one thing i found most interesting was the stories. Also, the number of remarkable women tht fought like Susan B. Anthony. She was a great leader in the movement.
As I have combed through my research I have found some interesting stories about the women of the suffragist movment. One was the story of Susan B. anthony and her friends attempt to vote. The women bullied the man at the booth into letting them register. I thought that it was funny but then I read that they were booked on charges for what they did. In addition, I found the story of the March down Pennsylvania avenue interesting. The women were thrown to the ground, spit on, had thier clothes ripped and thcigar buds pushed into thier skin, yet they persevered thier way through the crown to finish the march. Also, the book told about how a group of visiting college students locked hands and led the women through the crowd to support them.
So far in my research I think I have picked a good topic. Compared to the annotated bibliography it has been so easy to find sources. I have six currently but I am pretty sure I will not be using one of them. My question is: What is the American Women’s Suffragist Movement? I liked this topic because I like politics but I hate all the conflict it starts so I figured this is a way to look at a series of events that shaped politics without discussing personal political beliefs. My research consists of three internet sources and two books. I consider both books academic sources and one of my internet as academic. The other two sources I am not sure are academic but both are good sources.
Hosted by 