Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness. It was deeper and more intimate that the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw. Okonkwo’s fear was greater than these. It was not external but lay deep within himself.
Interpretation
Fear of failure and weakness can dominate a person's life, shaping their identity and actions.
In this quote, Chinua Achebe reveals that Okonkwo, a central character in his novel 'Things Fall Apart', exemplifies how deeply entrenched fears can govern one's life. Despite being perceived as cruel, Okonkwo's actions are driven by an inner turmoil and a profound fear of failure and weakness, which he internalizes more than any external threats. This highlights a philosophical exploration of how personal fears can overshadow one's true nature and lead to self-destructive behavior.
In practice
This quote can be used in a motivational speech about overcoming personal fears.
In fact, I thought that Christianity was very a good and a very valuable thing for us. But after a while, I began to feel that the story that I was told about this religion wasn't perhaps completely whole, that something was left out.
Writers don't give prescriptions. They give headaches!
Mr. Brown had thought of nothing but numbers. He should have known that the kingdom of God did not depend on large crowds. Our Lord Himself stressed the importance of fewness. Narrow is the way and few the number. To fill the Lord's holy temple with an idolatrous crowd clamoring for signs was a folly of everlasting consequence. Our Lord used the whip only once in His life - to drive the crowd away from His church.
It is the storyteller who makes us what we are, who creates history. The storyteller creates the memory that the survivors must have - otherwise their surviving would have no meaning.
Writing has always been a serious business for me. I felt it was a moral obligation. A major concern of the time was the absence of the African voice. Being part of that dialogue meant not only sitting at the table but effectively telling the African story from an African perspective - in full earshot of the world.
An angry man is always a stupid man.
Oh, they never lie. They dissemble, evade, prevaricate, confound, confuse, distract, obscure, subtly misrepresent and willfully misunderstand with what often appears to be a positively gleeful relish and are generally perfectly capable of contriving to give one an utterly unambiguous impression of their future course of action while in fact intending to do exactly the opposite, but they never lie. Perish the thought.
Re-telling the Christian story is the essence of my vocation. That has been going on since the Evangelists in one form or another.
Philosophy is altogether less pure now. It's been impurified by science and social science and history.
No pleasure is evil in itself; but the means by which certain pleasures_x000D_ _x000D_ are gained bring pains many times greater than the pleasures.
While the impostor draws his identity from past achievements and the adulation of others, the true self claims identity in its belovedness. We encounter God in the ordinariness of life: not in the search for spiritual highs and extraordinary, mystical experiences but in our simple presence in life.
For as men in battle are continually in the way of shot, so we, in this world, are ever within the reach of Temptation.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.