TFA part 1 response

Okonkow's overly-masculine personality infuriates and intrigues me at the same time. To me it seems like he has some sort of inferiority complex. The definition of an inferiority complex is "intense feeling of inferiority, producing a personality characterized either by extreme reticence or, as a result ofovercompensation, by extreme aggressiveness." His actions towards his children and wives would defiantly support such a possible diagnosis, while his relationship with his father would be reason enough to explain why he has come to think the way he does. This killing is after three years of Ikemefuna living in the village and even seeing Okonkwo as a father. The fact that Okonkwo was unable to eat or sleep for three days afterwards proves (to me at least) that he felt some connection and yet he is the one to kill Ikemefuna, against his friend's warning, because he doesn't want to be seen as weak, a textbook example of overcompensation.

He's so disturbingly raptured by this fear of the possibility of being feminine  and weak that he just comes off looking like an ignorant ass who is obsessed with control. I understand that he wants to be nothing like his father but he is so terribly overbearing that it imposes on his children. His son is so afraid of his father's disapproval (which comes with beatings) that he denies his own likes for the sake of his father's approval. This doesn't exactly show a reticence ("disposed to be silent, not speaking freely") in Okonkow, but him forcing such a silence on his own son, which in turn only creates another cycle of inferiority among other issues.