Scout Finch
Mrs. Ernst
1st hr World Literature
2-12-10
Proposal
I started this process by looking on Shmoop and Spark Notes. Where else would you start
if you don’t know the answer? I looked under almost every tab of Things Fall Apart on
Shmoop and then almost every tab of Antigone on Shmoop. I was really annoyed that
there was no resource for Samurai’s Garden because this does seem like a cool web
resource. After clicking and reading, clicking and reading for almost two days on
Shmoop, I decided to try Spark Notes. Quickly, I realized this was NOT helpful. I don’t
need to understand the story, I need to analyze the story. Finally, I decided to go back to
the basics – my reading logs. I know Mrs. Ernst said this would be a good place to start,
but I had to see right?
After reading through my reading logs from Things Fall Apart, I’ve realized that
Okonkwo’s dad comes up again and again. And when I think back on the story, I realize
that the thing that sticks out most in my mind is Okonkwo’s obsession with being
everything his father isn’t. This hits a little close to home for me, except in a different
way. I went back into Shmoop now that I had a plausible idea. While flipping through
pages I had already seen, I came across this idea under questions for the theme of
“Language and Communication”, “The troubles in Okonkwo and Nwoye’s relationships
are the result of bad communications; neither shares his emotions with each other and
Okonkwo quickly jumps to aggressive physical action, which halts communication.”
Then I suddenly realized that Stephen from Samurai’s Garden and Okonkwo both had
really big issues with their dads. So, then I thought the topic of father-son relationships,
would be really interesting to work with, but I wasn’t so sure about my theme, but I had a
feeling this would bring me to my thesis.
This was the hard part. I did some brainstorming in my brain and on paper for almost an
entire hour. I was getting frustrated so I decided to sleep on it and then next day I looked
back at my brainstorms. I realized that I was trying too hard to make Okonkwo my main
focus and totally ignored Nwoye. After kicking around some ideas about Nwoye, I
noticed that Nwoye and Stephen probably had the most in common, crappy dads, but they
both find someone that they would rather look up to. That is when I started to write my
thesis statement. After writing this about ten different ways, here is my working thesis
statement:
In Gail Tsukiyama’s The Samurai’s Garden and Chinue Achebe’s Things Fall
Apart there are significant father-son relationship through the characters of Stephen (and
Mr. Chan) and Nwoye (and Okonkwo). Both of these characters had strained or difficult
relationships with their biological fathers leading them to seek a surrogate father figure.
Ultimately, proving that all humans seek intimate, meaningful parent relationships.