The world in Chinua Achedes novel, Things Fall Apart, was a society in which males had
control of everything, and the women had control of nothing. As wives, women were seen as
property, rather than as partners to be loved and cherished. The men of the Ibo tribe
usually married more than one wife because the more wives, yams, barns, and titles each
Ibo man held, the more successful he was considered. These possessions determined a man's
social status. An example of a man looking for social status in these ways was Nwakibie,
who had three huge barns, nine wives and thirty children, and the highest but one title
which a man could take in the clan(18). The men controlled the children and women by
treating them like slaves. Their only r
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