English (reading journal)

Reading Journal

Chapter 1:

In chapter 1 we start by reading about Okonkwo, a respected warrior from the Umuofia clan. He is described as a tall and brave warrior that was respected because of the multiple fights he was involved in. During his youth, Okonkwo defeated Amalinze the Cat, another warrior that had been un defeated until that day. In this chapter they also talk about Okwonko s father: Unoka. The narrator says that Ukonko hated people that were lazy and did nothing in life just like his father. Unoka would always borrow money from other people and just lose it very quickly leaving his family hungry.

In this chapter what the narrator is basically doing is describing the space in which the story takes place and also our protagonist and the secondary characters. This story takes place in Nigeria in a village called Igbo. Okwonko is psicologically described as a very bad sense of humour  He focus a lot in doing his work (farming) well so that his family wont suffer what he did as a child.

Chapter 2:

In this chapter the author continuous to describe the setting and he mainly describes how is it like to like in Umuofia. The conflict in this chapter is that one women (from Umuofia) was killed by people from a neighbour clan. Both clans end up making a deal where the neighbour clan will offer one young lady and a boy called Ikemefuna as an apology for killing the woman. The first thing that people from Umuofia do is to give the widower the young lady to replace his dead wife. This was the most shocking part (in my opinion) in the whole chapter as we can see that in this culture they treat people as objects and that they think they just can replace a dead person with a new one. In this chapter it is also mentioned that Ukwonko lives in his own house (alone) while each of his three wives have to live in different houses with their respective kids. With this the author is trying to give us an idea of the horrible situation the Nigeria women used to live.

Chapter 3:

In chapter three is a very brief one. It stars by telling us about the time Okwonkos father visited the oracle. Then he tells us when Okwonko had to borrow some seeds from Nwakibie (a very rich man). The first part tells us a little bit about the believes in Umuofia and we can infer that they have a very strong religion where people visit oracles to try to talk to their gods. The second part, in the other hand, only describes some values that Okwonko possesses; we can infer that Okwonko (despite from being a aggressive and very bad tempered) its a very hard working man that never gives up i the things he does.

Chapter 4:

Chapter four makes us go a little bit deeper into the religion in Umuofia. When Okwonko hits her wife while the week of peace the priest says he has to sacrifice a goat and make some offers to the gods in order to be forgiven. We can relate Umuofias religion to the Incas religion where they used to sacrifice animals when they   went against the rules.Apart from religion, we can also see that Okwonko is becoming way too proud of himself as he thinks he is better than most of people just because he has a very high status among others. Another aspect that we can see in Okwonko is that, dispite from being arrogant and bad temperated, he is well preparing his kids (based on critics and things like that) to be great farmers as he is.

Chapter 5:

Thsi is a very short chapter. We jus tlearn about the Umofias calendar or how does it works. We learn about The Feast of the New Yarm which is kind of a feast where they celebrate their new year. Okwonko considers it to be a meaningless festivity, this shows that he really doesnt care about his religion he jut cares about his farm and being productive, he might be a great farmer and warrior but he has no respect towards anyone or anything.