Okonko In Things Fall Apart

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Chinua Achebe challenges the social expectations of men through the protagonist Okonkwo. n the opening of the novel, readers learn of Okwonko's strength as "the older men agreed it was one of the fiercest since the founder of their town engaged a spirit of the wild for seven days and seven nights," which immediately draws readers into a world of competition. However Okwonko's status in the community was not only a result of his wrestling ability, but also because he "had risen so suddenly from great poverty and misfortune to be one of the lords of his clan." Okwonko is haunted by his father Unoka, who died a man with many debts. He grew up knowing the clan thought his father was a failure because of his soft and happy nature, and the pain fused to his spirit as "his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness," but not just any fear for "it was deeper and more intimate than the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw." …show more content…

This is then solidified as Achebe notes Okwonko had "one passion- to hate everything Unoka (his father) had loved. One of them was gentleness and another was idleness." Ikemefuna is eventually a victim of Okwonko's obsession with strength and hatred of fear, underlined when he is described to "never [show] any emotion openly, unless it was the emotion of anger." When the clan decide to kill Ikemfuna to satisfy the Earth Goddess, Okwonko is advised to not participate due to his connection with the boy, however he does the killing himself as he was "afraid of being thought weak." It is this attitude, derived from his own fear and his perception of what is to be expected of him to not be regarded as his father which ultimately leads Okwonko to fall from Grace and be exiled from the clan for seven

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