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A famous philosopher named Aristotle once said, "He who is unable to live in a society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god" (Moncur ). Ever since the first humans, people have sought to live and grow where other people are. This organization of people living together as a community is called a society. For the members of it, society furnishes protection, continuity, security and identity. Without a society to be a part of, man is nothing. Therefore, if a man comes into conflict with his society, he must either accept these differences or be destroyed. This nightmare comes to life in Chinua Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart, when the main character, Okonkwo, clashes with his society's beliefs. The conflict that exists between Okonkwo and his society is what ultimately leads him to his downfall.
Very early on, Okonkwo disagrees with many of his culture's most important values. These are held sacred in his clan, and have been practiced generations before him. The clan practices these values because they are tributes to the gods and goddesses. They are practiced as signs of respect for these deities in order to not make them angry. Achebe emphasizes the importance of being respectful, "a man who pays respect to the great paves the way for his own greatness" (Achebe 19). If a man shows respect, the clan will commend him for it and he too will one day be great. One of these values is the Week of Peace. The Week of Peace occurs during the carefree season between the harvest and the planting of the yams. During this week, every clansman is obligated to remain peaceful with one another. No one may fight each other, and husbands may not beat their wives or their children. If the peace is broken during this sacred week, the offender must face severe punishment. They are considered an abomination to the earth goddess and cannot escape her wrath. Another unique value arises when a prominent member of the clan is murdered by a member of a neighboring clan. To atone for this crime, the family of the murderer must give up its son, Ikemefuna, to Okonkwo's clan as a sacrifice. The boy is taken from his family, and sent to live with Okonkwo in his village. There, he lives in Okonkwo's compound for many years and becomes a part of the family.
The novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe is a story that opens the reader's mind to an entirely different way of living in a Nigerian village. Achebe was born in Nigeria in 1930, perhaps this is why he writes a whole book on a Nigerian village and introduces to us the ways of life for the Nigerian people. From the first page of the book to the last, Achebe allows the reader to enter the mind of the main character Okonkwo. Okonkwo is the leader of his village and is very respected for his many achievements. Although Okonkwo means well for his village, the novel invites the reader to see him has a flawed character who eventually suffers from the consequences of bad "masculine" decisions he makes throughout the book.
... his words that he committed a great evil; we live in peace with our fellows to honor our great goddess of the earth without whose blessings our crops will not grow. You have committed a great evil (Achebe 30). Okonkwo displays another fit of anger during the feast of the new yam, when he almost killed his second wife with a gun because she cut a few leaves off the banana tree to wrap some food. Without patience to discern her explanation; she was beaten mercilessly and almost got killed. Okonkwo lacked a sense of affection towards his family, which can be linked to his fear of weakness. He repudiates any show of emotion or patience in order not to appear weak. His household lived in a perpetual fear, he never gave them the opportunity to get close to him without been scared of him, and this really had a great effect with the relationship he had with his household.
When different cultures interact, a shock will always occur. Change because of clashing cultures is inevitable, but how a person responds to change varies on different levels. In Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, characters are introduced to an outside force of the Western world. Many of them, especially the main character, Okonkwo, attempt to remain with their original cultural beliefs, but some decide to listen to other stories. Among the changing characters is Nwoye, Okonkwo’s son. In Achebe’s novel, Nwoye’s positive change in understanding and motivation after the introduction of Western religion has the greatest impact on the book due to its effect on other characters in the book, especially Okonkwo.
Okonkwo’s fear of unmanliness is kindled by his father, who was a lazy, unaccomplished man. Okonkwo strives to have a high status from a young age and eventually achieves it. He has a large family, many yams and is well known throughout the village for his valor. He raises his family by his mentality of manliness and is ...
In these few chapters that we read, we have already learned a lot about Okonkwo, his life, and how he shows sympathy to some, but to others he is heartless. Okonkwo is other wise known as an unsympathetic person. Okonkwo is a clan leader of umuofia who holds many titles and is well known among his people. Okonkwo's daily life consists of tending to the three yam farms he has produced and to make numerous offerings to numerous gods and to help himself and his family. Okonkwo's personality is hard driven, since his father did not provide for him and his family Okonkwo had to start man hood early and this led him to be very successful in his adulthood, Okonkwo is an unsympathetic character who only shows sympathy rarely because he believes it's a sign of weakness Okonkwo's family relationships make him a sympathetic character because when his children show signs of manliness or do their jobs right he shows sympathy towards them. He is an unsympathetic character because whenever he get a little mad he has to take his anger out on something and that is usually vented by beating his wife's.
Okonkwo, a fierce warrior, remains unchanged in his unrelenting quest to solely sustain the culture of his tribe in the time of religious war in Achebe's book, Things Fall Apart. He endures traumatic experiences of conflict from other tribes, dramatic confrontations from within his own family, and betrayal by his own tribe.
Is Okonkwo a tragic hero? To answer that question one must start by defining the term 'tragic hero' first introduced by Aristotle. Aristotle defined a tragic hero simply as being a character fulfilling three different requirements. The character must be larger than life, and must have a high social standing. The character must also have ordinary human qualities, and must have a tragic flaw that leads to his downfall. In Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, all these characteristics are found in Okonkwo of Umuofia.
There is a one character in the famous novel called Things Fall Apart considered a tragic hero by many readers. The name of this character is Okonkwo and, not coincidentally, he is also the main character in the novel. Ideas of him being a tragic hero did not arise from his robust, manly appearance, but rather from his way of life and thinking that ultimately led him to his inevitable tragic demise.
What if a person’s relationship with his father determined if he lived or died, or if he would ever see his mother or siblings again? For the children of Okonkwo in Things Fall Apart it did. Things Fall Apart takes place in Nigeria in the early nineteenth century. The novel focuses on the life of Okonkwo, a man famous for winning a wrestling match against the greatest wrestler in all the local villages, when he was just eighteen years old. Okonkwo’s family consisted of his three wives and ten children, they lived in a village called Umuofia. Okonkwo didn’t have very good relationships with most of his children, and most people in general. Okonkwo had different relationships with all of his children because they were all individuals, their relationships with their father constructed all of their futures in diverse ways.
From an early age, Okonkwo was ashamed of his father, Unoka, who was unable even to feed his family. The unpredictability of receiving enough food at a young age was enough to inspire fear and embarrassment in Okonkwo who associated this embarrassment with his father and was given further justification for these feelings when he went out into Umuofia, discovering that the other villagers held similar opinions of Unoka. When he was old enough, Okonkwo began farming his own yams because “he had to support his mother and two sisters […] And supporting his mother also meant supporting his father” (25). Okonkwo’s self-reliance was admired, valued in the community where “age was respected […] but achievement was revered” (12); this admiration gave him feelings of security, and the respect of his peers pushed him towards greater self-respect, distancing him from his father. The security and respect became related in his mind as he viewed his acceptance in the community as his life’s goal and Okonk...
Okonkwo is the main character within the book, Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe. Okonkwo is an individual whom has many different personalities that are portrayed in different situations. He can be a nice and welcoming individual but also an abusive and harmful individual. Before returning to Umofia, in which the missionaries had invaded, Okonkwo had grown up upon resenting his father’s laziness, devoting his time in proving that he was much better than his father. That he was more respectable and masculine. These were qualities in which Okonkwo’s father had lacked. Upon reaching Umofia, Okonkwo becomes more passive than he has ever been. While watching in sorrow and grief of the coming of the missionaries as he is unable to anything about. The missionaries had turned Okonkwo into a completely different individual. Changing him for the worst.
Okonkwo, in Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, was faced with many hardships in his life. When growing up he had to deal with a lazy father, then when he was older he had to kill a boy that called him father, and he also accidentally killed a young boy from his village. These events played a very tragic role in Okonkwos life.
Societies are widely portrayed across literature as groups of people living together in an organized community while sharing a similar culture. However, not all societies have developed properly to be classified as civilized. A civilized society is one that has been brought to a stage of social, cultural, and moral development, causing it to be considered more advanced. In the novel, Things Fall Apart, author Chinua Achebe depicts the Ibo society as civilized through their egwugwu justice system, worshipping of a spiritual Oracle, and patriarchal dominance.
The main character of Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo is considered a tragic hero to some people. Shakespeare once said that tragic hero holds a position of power and prestige, chooses his course of action, possesses a tragic flaw, and and unfortunately has a tragic downfall. Okonkwo's tragic flaw is his fear of weakness and failure. To add, Chinua Achebe used a tragic hero in his novel to erase the stereotype that is set forth by Europeans during this time period.
Chinua Achebe's novel, Things Fall Apart, uses the changes in African tribal culture brought about by European colonization to illustrate the evolution of the character Okonkwo. As Okonkwo leads his life, his experiences, personality and thought are revealed to the reader. The obstacles he faces in life are made numerous as time progresses. Okonkwo's most significant challenge originates within himself. He also encounters problems not only when in opposition to the white culture, but in his own culture, as he becomes frustrated with tribal ideals that conflict with his own. The last adversary he encounters is of the physical world, brought upon himself by his emotional and cultural problems. The manner through which Okonkwo addresses his adversaries in Things Fall Apart creates the mechanism that leads to his eventual destruction.