More handpicked essays just for you.
Analysis of chinua achebe's things fall apart
Analysis of chinua achebe's things fall apart
Analysis of chinua achebe things fall apart
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Okonkwo in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart In Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo is a tragic hero. Aristotle’s Poetics defines a Tragic Hero as a good man of high status who displays a tragic flaw (“hamartia”) and experiences a dramatic reversal (“peripeteia”), as well as an intense moment of recognition (“anagnorisis”). Okonkwo is a leader and hardworking member of the Igbo community of Umuofia whose tragic flaw is his great fear of weakness and failure. Okonkwo’s fall from grace in the Igbo community and eventual suicide, makes Okonkwo a tragic hero by Aristotle’s definition. Okonkwo is “a man of action, a man of war” (7) and a member of high status in the Igbo village. He holds the prominent position of village clansman due to the fact that he had “shown incredible prowess in two intertribal wars” (5). Okonkwo’s hard work had made him a “wealthy farmer” (5) and a recognized individual amongst the nine villages of Umuofia and beyond. Okonkwo’s tragic flaw isn’t that he was afraid of work, but rather his fear of weakness and failure which stems from his father’s, Unoka, unproductive life and disgraceful death. “Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and weakness….It was not external but lay deep within himself. It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father.” Okonkwo’s father was a lazy, carefree man whom had a reputation of being “poor and his wife and children had just barely enough to eat... they swore never to lend him any more money because he never paid back.” (5) Unoka had never taught Okonkwo what was right and wrong, and as a result Okonkwo had to interpret how to be a “good man”. Okonkwo’s self-interpretation leads him to conclude that a “good man” was someone who was the exact opposite of his father and therefore anything that his father did was weak and unnecessary. Okonkwo’s fear leads him to treat members of his family harshly, in particular his son, Nwoye. Okonkwo often wonders how he, a man of great strength and work ethic, could have had a son who was “degenerate and effeminate” (133). Okonkwo thought that, "No matter how prosperous a man was, if he was unable to rule his women and his children (and especially his women) he was not really a man" (45).
"Man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but, when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all." (Aristotle). In Chinua Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo is living proof of Aristotle's statement. Although he is arguably the most powerful man in Umuofia, His personal flaws of fear of failure and uncontrollable anger do not allow him true greatness as a human being.
Abame, a village almost identical to Umuofia, had recently been wiped out by the strange visit of white men. The area in which this story takes place has never seen these albino people, and most of the villages didn’t believe the stories that these men exist. After the first arrival of a white man, Abame consulted the Oracle, who in return, foretold the demise of the clan if they were to let him free. As a result, Abame killed the intruder, and laid the matter to rest. However, even after many market weeks, their precaution led to the anger of the man’s party. On a popular market day the white men attacked and murdered the entire village, and only a small band of refugees were able to survive. When hearing of the innocent slaughter of the tribe, Uchendu tells the story of Mother Kite and her daughter, who are
Within the Obi tribe, Okonkwo is an important man, who has risen from nothing to a man of great wealth and social status. Okonkwo is obsessed with masculinity, and he has a very narrow view of “manliness”. Okonkwo's relationship with his dead father is the root of his violent and ambitious conduct. He wants to rise above his father's legacy of laziness, which he views as weak and therefore feminine. This drive and fierce pride made him a great man, but they are also the source of all of his faults.
A character with a tragic flaw is one who consistently makes a particular error in their actions and this eventually leads to their doom. Okonkwo, a perfect tragic character, is driven by his fear of unmanliness, which causes him to act harshly toward his fellow tribesmen, his family and himself. He judges all people by how manly they act. In Okonkwo’s eyes a man is a violent, hard working, wealthy person and anyone who does not meet these standards he considers weak.
From birth Okonkwo had wanted his son, Nwoye, to be a great warrior like him. His son instead rebelled and wanted to be nothing like Okonkwo. Okonkwo would not change so that his son would idolize him, as he had wanted since his son's birth. He chose not to acknowledge his son's existence instead. This would weigh heavily on anyone's conscience, yet Okonkwo does not let his relationship with his son affect him in the least bit.
Okonkwo’s true nature was clearly only reflected around those he closest to him, many times only under intimate or special circumstances. As his true masculinity, his unrealised and under expressed fondness for those he loved, and his overly expressed fiery temper, was shown to the greatest extent only around those closest to him. This deeply developed the character, and heightened the sense of Okonkwo being a tragic hero in Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart.
The struggle between custom values and conversion is a universally applied theme to Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. The fable like, tragic tone of the work was set off from the very first page. The verb FALL APART has 4 senses to lose one's emotional or mental composure, go to pieces, break or fall apart into fragments, and to become separated into pieces or fragments. These are all exemplified in the novel Things Fall Apart. Okonkwo is a tragic hero in the traditional sense. His fate was decided for him and was unavoidable. Okonkwo’s inability to act rationally and express his feelings in a anthropological manner leads to his inescapable demise. Okonkwo exhibits the characteristics of a tragic hero not only by encompassing an unexceptional flaw. Okonkwo not only developed this flaw because of his erroneous equivalence of masculinity with being filled with relentless fury, vehemence, and impetuousness, but also because he leads to his own self-annihilation.
In this book, there are many things that begin to fall apart for Okonkwo. One thing that stood out to me the most was the way that Okonkwo’s life began to fall apart. From a rough childhood, to him killing a boy that looked to him as a father, to his daughter getting sick. Part of that is because of his own actions and wanting to be everything his father wasn’t. Okonkwo hated his father ever since he was a young boy. His relationship with his father was a non-factor because Okonkwo had no patience for unsuccessful men and men who couldn’t provide for their families and his father was just that. His father, Unoka was a coward, he was weak, in debt and because of that Okonkwo didn’t have a good start in life like he should have. Because Okonkwo
by Chinua Achebe, Okonkwo depicts his masculinity in many different ways, even if it hurts the people closest to him. He feels it is necessary to display his manliness so he does not end up like his father Unoka. “He had no patience with unsuccessful men. He had no patience with his father” (4). Okonkwo correlates virility with aggression and feels the only emotion he should show is anger, leaving him no way to cope with the death of his culture.
Two passages from the story Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe, provide the reader with a more profound understanding of Okonkwo, and his son Nwoye. The two do not have a good relationship and it becomes worse as the story progresses. Throughout the book the two become increasingly distant and it is apparent that Okonkwo is very disappointed in his son. After the death of Ikemefuna, Nwoye begins to question many aspects of his life, especially religion. As the Christian missionaries spend more time with the members of the village, Nwoye becomes interested in this new religion. The first passage I have chosen discusses Nwoye’s feelings about Christianity.
The character of Okonkwo in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart was driven by fear, a fear of change and losing his self-worth. He needed the village of Umuofia, his home, to remain untouched by time and progress because its system and structure were the measures by which he assigned worth and meaning in his own life. Okonkwo required this external order because of his childhood and a strained relationship with his father, which was also the root of his fears and subsequent drive for success. When the structure of Umuofia changed, as happens in society, Okonkwo was unable to adapt his methods of self-evaluation and ways of functioning in the world; the life he was determined to live could not survive a new environment and collapsed around him.
Okonkwo wanted to become one of the greatest men in the Ibo tribe, but three unfortunate events occur bringing him closer to his end. Okonkwo was a proud, industrious figure who through hard work was able to elevate himself to a stature of respect and prominence in his community. The one major character flaw was that he was a man driven by his fear to extreme reactions. Okonkwo was petrified of inadequacy namely because his father was a complete and utter failure. This fear of shortcoming made him hate everything his father loved and represented: weakness, gentleness, and idleness. Who was Okonkwo, well Okonkwo was a hero and also he...
n his delineation of the defining factors of a tragic hero, Aristotle drew on the archetypes established in Greek tragedies by such masters as Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Because this type of hero occurred often, and these three great tragedians ' works served as a basis for later writers, the archetype persisted in European literature, as evidenced in works by authors such as Shakespeare. A major question that arises, then, is whether the tragic hero is a purely European archetype, perpetuated as a result of prominent Greek tragedies, or whether he occurs throughout all human culture and was captured by the Greeks in an example of a universally human character. The main character of Chinua Achebe 's novel Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo, offers a potential solution for this dilemma, given both his and Achebe 's Nigerian nationality. Despite the tragic elements of his story, however,
The character of Okonkwo in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart was driven by fear, a fear of change and losing his self-worth. He needed the village of Umuofia, his home, to remain untouched by time and progress because its system and structure were the measures by which he assigned worth and meaning in his own life. Okonkwo required this external order because of his childhood and a strained relationship with his father, which was also the root of his fears and subsequent drive for success. When the structure of Umuofia changed, as happens in society, Okonkwo was unable to adapt his methods of self-evaluation and ways of functioning in the world; the life he was determined to live could not survive a new environment and collapsed around him.
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.