Things Fall Apart, On the Road and Pride and Prejudice - Essay Example

 The authors of the books; Things Fall Apart, On the Road and Pride and Prejudice have all employed similar themes to prove how friendship has been used to develop a protagonist. A protagonist is the person, who is considered as the main character in a play or a novel. He or she is the equivalent to the hero or heroine in any play. In majority of the plays and the novels, protagonists tend to lose every case, mistreated or misunderstood in the course of the story. Within the story, protagonists mostly seem to win the trust of the people. In other words, the main characters or the protagonists usually play a positive role throughout the play or the novel. Thus, they will be able to attract trust from the people through their loyal acts. Most protagonists use friends to get information, and are ready to work closely with them. In majority of the plays and novels, the protagonists usually have an opposition. The opposition usually arises against the activities of the main character. The achievements of the main characters are received differently by the people covered in the novel. In many of the plays and novels, one of the very close friends of the main character turns to be the villain later. The villain usually gathers support from a few people to fight against the activities of the protagonists. This sets the stage for the main novel, makes the readers understand the conflict, the main theme, and roughly what the whole story is about. The stands taken by the two warring factions set the ground for the remaining people to follow. Some people would support the villain whereas others would go with the protagonist(Millstein). In all the books mentioned at the beginning, the story is similar to the one as described above. A complete analysis of these novels is done in the following paragraphs. In things fall apart, a novel by Chinua Achebe, Okonkwo is the protagonist. He has a contrasting personality in the novel. Some of his activities are admirable while the rests are not so. In the story, Okonkwo is portrayed as a strong person, who works hard and shows no evidences of weaknesses. He builds wealth by himself as he never wanted to die as miserable as his lazy father. In his life, Okonkwo had a close friend, Obierika, who could advise him on different issues. Obierika, helps him in almost every aspect of his life. In most of the times, Okonkwo ignores the friend’s advice initially, but at last he sees some sense in his words. Later in his life, Okonkwo becomes so powerful and influential in the community. The first honor he brings to himself was through a wrestling when he beats Amalinze. This made him earn respect throughout the village as he proved that he was a courageous person (Rhoads). Okonkwo is portrayed as a hero as he tries his best to lift up the family from disgrace and gives it a better face in the community. He is portrayed as a dictator who has no reluctance in beating his wives to stamp his authority. His father died of shame since he was lazy and could hardly feed anything to his kids. He was also a failure in controlling his family. Learning lessons from his father’s failure, Okonkwo constantly beats his wives as a measure to put more control on his family and stamp his authority in the family. These activities were motivated by the fact that his father did nothing for his wives, and thereby invited criticism from the whole village people. In his middle ages, Okonkwo befriends a young boy Ikemefuna, who was his son’s close friend. When an order comes that the boy should be killed, the village hero decided to kill the boy with his own machete so that he could not be seen as a loser. He wanted to establish his power and authority, by killing this young boy. However, his best friend was against the killing of this boy. For Okonkwo, killing of that boy would help him to extend his power beyond the territories of his family (Booker). Okonkwo is seen as a natural leader in the village. His friendship with the people, earns him leadership in the society. Because of his readiness to work hard and to solve social problems, he was respected not only among his friends, but also in the society. Okonkwo naturally becomes the centre of attraction as everybody looks up to him when they require some assistance. The death of an elder person, who warned Okonkwo against the killing of the young boy, has created some doubts among the people. Many people thought that Okonkwo was responsible for the death of the elder person since that person warned Okonkwo against the killing of the young boy. The reactions of Okonkwo after the death of that elder person have increased the doubts of the people. Okonkwo’s aggressiveness and anger, his yearn for violence from childhood and desire for revenge makes him to be the first suspect. In this state, the relationship he had with this old man makes him draw attention and the whole story revolves around him. He was able to prove his innocence later. His actions as the protagonist show his ability to stand alone. His respect, control over family, actions and not being happy with the way the father died makes him work so hard to be successful (Achebe). Okonkwo’s supportive characteristics are depicted when his closest friend runs to him in his mother’s village where Okonkwo was in exile to tell him about the intruders. He came to spread the news about a white man, who came in a bicycle and was killed. It is for this reason that most of the village men were killed in revenge of the one fallen white. Obierika plays a major role in saving many of the village men from the attacks of the whites. Several men in the village heard about this, and they chose Okonkwo as their leader. They believed that the safety and security of their motherland would be safe in the hands of Okonkwo. After returning home, he finds that everything has changed and plans to take over to oppose the rules of the white man. This was a role that his closest friend gave him when he was in exile. He plans to eradicate the rule of the white man and thereby become the head of the village (Booker). The villagers are not resistive of the white man's rule when Okonkwo is away since the elders, and his best friend were highly diplomatic in their dealings. When Okonkwo was in exile, his best friend was against the idea of sending the intruders away, but opted for a different method. He thought that when given a chance, the white men could change to their own way of life. He believed that anything can happen tomorrow. In his opinion, the intruders could embrace their culture later. This belief works well with other village elders until Okonkwo comes back from exile. On arrival, he faults the village for allowing all those changes to happen in the land. Being so rigid and not willing to embrace the new system in the village, he defies. It is Obierika who told him about the coming of the intruders, again, the friend tries to employ a method that seems to be very comfortable with the rest of the village. When he came with his own way of fighting the white man, all the village attention was drawn to him and to this point. He acted like a hero and offered salvation and asked the villagers to oppose the white man's rule openly. This earned him an arrest and the villagers paid for his release (Rhoads). The close friendship that Okonkwo had with the tradition makes him dependable and out to fight for his people. A strong community belief that Okonkwo had, his ego, and tradition could not let him sell his people to the white man. In his state, the whole village seemed to have depended on him since he was a true believer in tradition. This is seen when he kills a missionary messenger because of the different beliefs. He wants to make his community pure; he expects a clear opposition from the community to protect their land. The true ownership is left for the villages while the intruders easily come to take it away. The intruders build churches, schools and courts in a place that did not belong to them. Okonkwo was a severe critic of all these activities of the intruders. His resistance, in protection of the land's tradition, makes the whole story revolve around him, giving him the characteristics of a true protagonist (Rhoads). Okonkwo dearly loved his community; he loved his traditions and their way of life. He expected support from all the villagers to fight the white tradition. His frustrations and the fear of fighting alone make him hang himself. After killing the head of the messengers, he notices that his clansmen did nothing to stop the other remaining messengers. This frustrated him, and he saw all the clansmen as cowards. He realised that he was the only hero and the whole community would surrender to the white man. This belief has created frustration in the mind of Okonkwo. He believed that accepting death like a hero would be better than living like a coward. Okonkwo opts to die than see an intruder make new laws, start their own system of government and rule in their own way. He could not stand the sight of this new rule which to him, it could be so oppressive and his influence could not be felt. The hero's life ends miserably, and the soldier of the village takes his own life (Baldwin). On the road The novel, “On the road”, was written by an American, Jack Kerouac. In this novel, Sal Paradise is the main character. The whole book is about the travels of the main character together with his friends, across the United States. The role that the protagonist plays is made clearer by his friends as they give him a reason to play his duty. He wants to keep them close and be happy around them. One of his closest friends was irresponsible and he treats women as trash. He does not care about them at all. This gives Sal Paradise the chance to play a role in at least every aspect of his friends’ lives. In this whole book, the protagonist took much time travelling and visiting his friends, staying with some of them at some point and leaving after a couple of days. His friends created the development of Sal as the protagonist as discussed below (Millstein). Sal had a hard time staying in his marriage as he is divorced. Their relationship must explicitly have started from friendship. After their divorce, the protagonist sets his journey to start a new life. His first voyage heads to San Francisco. This marks the beginning of his new life and leaves the readers in suspense for his mission in mind. This already creates an awareness that he may not be able to stay in a place for a longer period. Since the story revolves around him, Sal captures the attention of the reader. The several questions about him would be answered in the course of the novel, alerting the reader of his role in the story. His new journey opens a whole new beginning of life. He sees the kind of life that his friend, Dean lives and begins to admire it. He wants to proceed his life with full of freedom (Charters). Sal is easily swayed by his friends as he has no stand of his own. After partying with Dean, Carlo Marx and other of their friends, he decides to take a bus to San Francisco where he meets his friend Remi who gets him a job as a watchman. No one expects him to take this job since it was not what he would settle for. He works for some time then leaves the place. His main worry was to look for a girl in his imagination. He travelled too much distances in search of a girl; whose name or whereabouts are unknown to him. Even the appearance of the girl was not in his imagination. He met Terry on his way to Los Angeles. Terry was one of the cutest girls in Mexico. He later loses hope in her after Terry's brother makes him work in the cotton field as a way of asking her hand in marriage. To him, this was not the kind of job he would do just to get a girl for himself. This gives him a chance to walk away from that place and starts his journey again in search of a girl. All these activities that he does continuously in search for a girl in imagination, builds his character as the protagonist and all the attention is on him (Charters). As the protagonist, Sal shows loyalty to his friend Dean when he refuses to make love to his wife. Marylou was Dean's second wife after he dumped Camille with his new born baby. This was at the Christmas party where Sal was celebrating with his relatives. Sal was unhappy about his friend's visit since to him; Dean was just a bug on him. From his friend, Sal develops a character that readers would admire. As dean leaves Marylou for Camille again, she warns Sal of the kind of friend Dean was. He would leave Sal whenever he was pleased and comes back at his will. This builds Sal's personality and gives him the credit of being a good guy as the story would prefer. Sal finds himself losing for following Dean while he had his own independent interests. This builds him again, and he starts his life in a whole different direction. He vows to focus on his own life and stop following his friends. This creates a new independent character in him that would make a better protagonist. How his friend, Dean misled him made him develop a self-motivated main character (Theado). Sal depicts a character of a newly reformed being when he promises to start a new life all alone. After his return to New York, Sal looks for Dean again. Dean was so violent that he beat up Marylou for spending with other men and in the process, his thumb gets hurt. At this time, Camille was pregnant with their second kid. The duo, Dean and Sal then leave to New York where they discuss plans of living in the same street. The relationship between the two friends grew stronger as if something was drawing them together. In this sense, Dean and Sal get along well like real friends should be. The two then go to a party in New York where Dean gets Inez pregnant. This was the second point that Sal defined what he stood for. He gets a negative feeling about Dean and changes his mind about him. He is the kind of friend with whom he would love to live in the same street. At this point, Sal's personality as the protagonist is developed. Many men would support the actions of Dean, or they would have criticized him quite early from how he treated Camille and Marylou. Paradise decides to settle and stop moving around as that was not to be his way of life. After getting to meet new friends in Denver, San learns his lessons in his trip. When Dean realized that his friends were having good time in Denver, he drove to join them. That night, the friends went to a party to have fun, drinking, smoking and playing around with the prostitutes. Sal ends up suffering from Dysentery and lays ill for a couple of days. This was the time that Marylou's words stroke him that his closest friend would leave him when he would need him most. At the bed, Dean leaves his closest friend to have fun with the prostitutes and wives. At this moment, no one was sure the number of wives that Dean had. Two were already pregnant for him; one had his second child, and another had his first. Sal sees how selfish Dean becomes. He notices that he was not his friend even a tad bit. The kind of friendship that Sal would expect is not what he gets. After getting well from his disease, he decides to start another life. He contemplates settling down and stop travelling around. He makes his resolutions clear and expects to live by them. He sees his friend Victor putting his family first. All the other pleasures come after his family. He sets a good example for Sal who sees sense in it (Theado). Sal Paradise is seen to be struggling with his Adolescence rather than postponing it. In contrast, his closest friend Dean has it swiftly in his stage. As from the description, the characteristics of the protagonist are brought clearly through a comparison with a friend. Sal is a lonely guy. He thinks more than he does. Dean is the type that does not think too much before engaging into actions, in fact; Dean does most of his things without plans as opposed to Sal. Clearly, the characteristics of Sal are easily learnt when compared to those of his friend Dean. In the end, Sal settles with his girlfriend Laura. He takes her to San Francisco where they stay together. Dean comes to join them after securing divorce papers so as he could settle with Inez. Later, he changes his mind to go back to Camille and live with her. This is one character that shows a lot about his friend. They both like travelling and can hardly live in one place (Hunt). From the two tight friends, Sal and Dean have constantly lived separate lives. Dean does not care what he does to others. He thinks about himself more than he thinks about others. He physically abuses women as opposed to Sal who prefers diplomacy. He sexually abuses them, dumps and picks them whenever he is pleased. Sal sympathizes with how Dean treats ladies. He does nothing about it and after their departure, he forgets about them. He is the main protagonist in the novel as everything revolves around him. From this perspective, Sal's characterization as of independent decisions, always moving and can hardly settle are among his characterizations as a protagonist (Theado). Pride and prejudice The novel Pride and prejudice was written by Jane Austen and published in 1813. The protagonist in this novel is Elizabeth Bennet; who tries to deal with issues of marriage, moral, upbringing, and all the good manners that are helpful in life. This is one of the novels that have caught the attention of the readers and to date, it is still ranked one among the best English novels of the nineteenth century. In her quest, Elizabeth has friends who help in portraying her character traits. It is from these friends that the discussed traits are taken (Stafford) The friendship between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy portrays the change characteristic in Elizabeth. At first, Elizabeth says that Mr. Darcy is the last man on earth she would ever agree to marry. This was after the handsome gentleman proposes to her for the first time where she turned down that proposal. According to her description, Mr. Darcy was so proud that she could not stand being her woman. This went for quite a long time, until after a couple of months when he comes again to propose to her. This time, she agrees to her proposal. The fact that Elizabeth changed her mind about marrying a man she never thought she would give in brings about the aspect of change in her. It is from this change that the two agree to change. Mr. Darcy agrees to let go of his pride as Elizabeth lets her prejudice away (Fergus). Between Elizabeth and Jane, care is depicted. This was one of the most valued traits of Elizabeth as she could not stand seeing her friend sick then she stays away. When she learnt that Jane was taken ill, she was by her side and took good care of her to her recovery. Jane was Elizabeth's sister and a friend. She decides to go to where Jane was on foot without any means of transport. The spirit within her could not let her sit back and let her sister suffer in illness. She ensured that everything that her sister wanted was under her control. Forgetting and sacrificing all the other things that she could do just to take care of her sister is an explicit sign that she cared much and had her sister's health at heart. She was of good heart, and this is shown by the kind of care she gives to her sister (Austen and Carol). Problem solving technique is shown on the way Elizabeth handles the issue between her sister, sister’s boyfriend and Mr. Darcy. She is troubled by the way Mr. Darcy tries to interfere with the romance between the sister and her boyfriend. She tries to look at this matter critically and draws a very fair conclusion of the possible reasons. In her position, she wanted to protect the private life that her sister ought to have had. The constant interference from Mr. Darcy was not fair to her. On that, she concludes that the decision to interfere in their romance was selfish. Mr. Darcy was protecting his own interest of getting Mr. Bingley’s sister. He had to support the relationship between Mr. Bingley and Jane to protect this interest. This motive was later confirmed though everything never went as planned (Valerie and Diego). Elizabeth takes staunch decisions towards what she wants. Towards the end of the story, she tries to collect every quality of a man that would best suit her for marriage. All her options are tied and she notices that she has no other option but for Mr. Darcy. She notices that she loves and care for her. He is the man with whom she would love to spend the rest of her life. She decides to put her prejudice aside forever. She stays and waits for Mr. Darcy’s proposal which she easily gives in to. Equally, the other protagonist, Mr. Darcy puts his pride and ego aside so as to be happily in marriage with Elizabeth. The man that she hated most in her life becomes the man she spends the rest of her life with. Elizabeth makes other several decisions like not going to the dance with Mr. Darcy. When Mr. Collins asked her out and made a proposal to her, she decides to turn down her proposal and stays focused on what she wants. At some point, she declines to make public the true nature of Wickham. This decision later hurts her younger sister as she makes a folly. These staunch decisions that she takes are depicted by her relationship with her friends and the men with whom she was always in encounters (Stafford). From every encounter, Elizabeth always had a conscience. She comes up with things, sees mistakes from people and still decides not to be vocal about it. She could fault Wickham but chooses not to, takes a ground to turn down Collins’ proposal. She takes her time to make decisions and takes steps. She warns her father about the arrangement of marriage between her sister and another man for selfish reasons. Most of all, she takes her time before making a decision to look at the effects that it would cause to people. She gives freedom to every decision without trying to control or influence them. Before she married Darcy, she knew about his pride. Her conscience tells her that the only permanent thing in every life is change. She gives him a chance and at last Darcy stops his pride. In this case, she also stops her prejudice without any condition. She decides to give her relationship the best she could she is moved by her conscience to change and start a new life (Austen and Carol). From these interactions, the protagonists have known their characters through their friendship with people. It is through Elizabeth that Darcy knows he is proud; it is through Darcy that Elizabeth knows she has prejudice. The relationship between Elizabeth and her sister Jane brings out the caring characteristics of Elizabeth. The decisions that she decides to make help the reader to categorize her traits and make them clear for herself. She constantly meditates whenever she makes a mistake and corrects herself (Fergus). She again proves that she is secretive and keeps the secrets that could make her sister gets hurt. She sees her sister makes a mistake that would haunt her and goes quite to avoid breaking her heart. This is evident when she does not accept the proposal from the man she is not in love with so as to prevent breaking his heart. Her role all over the play is depicted through his relationship with people, both men and women. Works Cited Achebe, Chinua. “Things Fall Apart”. New York: Anchor Books, 1994. Austen, Jane and Carol, Howard. “Pride and Prejudice”. New York: Barnes and Noble Classics Collection, 2003. Print. Baldwin, Gordon. “Strange Peoples and Stranger Customs”. New York: W. W. Norton and Company Inc, 1997. Print. Booker, Keith. “Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe”. Pasadena, Calif: Salem Press, 2011. Print Charters, Ann. “Introduction to On the Road”. New York: Penguin Classics, 2003. Print. Fergus, Jan. “The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen”. Cambridge University Press, 1997. Print. Hunt, Tim. “Voice and Performance in On the Road”. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2009. Print. Millstein, Gilbert. “The Books of Times”. The New York Times, September 5, 1957 Rhoads, Diana. “Culture in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart”. African Studies Review. 36(2), 2010. Print. Stafford, Fiona. “Notes on the Text: Pride and Prejudice”. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Print. Theado, Matt. “Understanding Jack Kerouac”. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2000. Print. Valérie, Cossy and Diego, Saglia. “Translations: Jane Austen in Context”. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Print. Read More