Weekly Contest #2; |If You were to Live your Life as a Book Character...| by @sher11

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Hi everyone,
It’s an amazing feeling to be participating in my first contest here. I’m extremely grateful to @hive-186627 for organizing such a contest as I couldn’t let something like this slip me by.

For pretty much most of my life, I’d always been fascinated by people with rather compelling and often static characters. I yearned to know the thought processes that very much gave them the rather inflexible personality they had. It is for this reason I enjoyed Chinua Achibe’s portrayal of his main character, Okwonko in his famous novel, Things Fall Apart

Okwonko’s journey throughout the story was characterized by an over exhibition of African manliness, an unyielding and violent personality and more importantly, a perceived sense of bravery on his part. It is for this reason that his eventual demise through suicide was rather baffling especially for someone who constantly portrayed strength of character and mental will arguably unmatched in the village of Umofia.

As someone who has always held a particularly inexplicable sense of empathy for people and characters, i have often imagined my life in Okwonko’s shoes in a bid to experience how life would be for a person with a character as complex as that of Okwonko’s.

Okwonko hates his father, as he believes his father is everything he stands against; lazy, soft, gentle and love for music. He gains power and prestige in his village as he works incredibly hard on his farm and goes on to father numerous children by marrying 3 women.

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Living in a typified pre-colonial African community as a hardworking and manly figure with numerous wives has always seemed liked a luxury to me. Of course, I am not particularly dwelling on the promiscuous side of this, I am rather attracted by the ability to own a farm and be a prominent figure in my village whose bravery is well known since I have a directly opposite nature of life compared to Okwonko.

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Okwonko resists change as as the British start to settle amongst his people and community. He believes their presence and in particular their introduction of Christianity destroys their culture and everything they stand for. The inability of his character to be flexible and accept change without seemingly appearing weak in front of people proves decisive in his murder of a messenger sent by the British and his subsequent suicide after realizing his clansmen did not stand by him.

I keep wondering why people close themselves so much to change they refuse to consider accommodating such thoughts in their head. Living Okwonko’s life would give me the perspective I have always been looking for, whether stubbornly sticking by your beliefs especially in a situation like his was always the best and whether or not he mused about the possibility of he being cowardly as opposed to being brave.

It’d be incredible to experience the many emotions I’d imagine Okwonko would feel and especially right before he commits suicide. I’d like to believe there was a personal character assessment as someone wanting to experience Okwonko’s life and despair at the unfortunate inability to develop hope right before he kills himself.

A fascinating character who was probably more cowardly than he was brave all his tragic life.

I’d like to ask @wandaisman to check out this contest and hopefully join too!
Thanks for reading my post!!