Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe is a brilliant novel because of its description of Okonkwo’s fall from prominence. However, even though Okonkwo was a brilliant wrestler, he hated the sullen life of his father, a man who had many debts throughout his life. As a father, Okonkwo fears that his son, Nwoye, is not masculine enough to become successful in the clan. Fear becomes recurring theme in the novel, and it plays a gigantic role in Okonkwo’s death. In Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo’s fear is the driving force behind many of his actions, including his own death. In the novel, Okonkwo’s fear of becoming like his father drives him to become the polar opposite of Unoka: emotionally hardened and distant. This is truly displayed in his hate for …show more content…
In his opinion, Nwoye is too emotional, and Okonkwo interprets this as Nwoye being more feminine than masculine. When Nwoye is captivated by the missionaries in Umuofia, Okonkwo tries to keep his son from leaving by yelling and beating him, but there is no response from Nwoye, and “Okonkwo did not answer...He (Nwoye) went back to the church and told Mr. Kiaga that he had decided to go to Umuofia where the white missionary had set up a school to teach young Christians to read and write.” (152). Before this encounter, Nwoye visited the missionaries and learned about Christianity. Okonkwo fears that he will lose his son, and so he desperately pins the boy down, beats him, and demands an answer. However, this has the complete opposite effect: Nwoye no longer fears Okonkwo, it is his father who fears that the boy will leave and damage his own reputation. Okonkwo’s own fear of loss drove him to lose the person that he was trying to save. After the fight, Nwoye leaves for the missionary school. Okonkwo’s persistent fear that his son is not masculine enough also shapes the way he views Nwoye leaving him and his own family. Okonkwo thinks about how people used to call him the roaring flame, “And immediately Okonkwo’s eyes were opened and he saw the whole matter clearly. Living fire begets cold, impotent ash.” (153). Okonkwo sees himself as the fire and his son as the cold, …show more content…
Okonkwo appears to fear the white men even before they jailed and beat him, along with several other of the leaders of the clan. Furthermore, Okonkwo also advised all of the leaders to bring weapons when they were invited to a meeting with the district commissioner. His fear comes to a head when the messengers arrive to break up a gathering of the clan, when the people of Umuofia are planning to revolt against the white men and their government. The messenger began to speak, but Okonkwo reacted quicker: “‘The white man whose power you know has ordered this meeting to stop.’ In a flash Okonkwo drew his machete. The messenger crouched to avoid the blow. It was useless...Okonkwo stood looking at the dead man. He knew Umuofia would not go to war. He knew because they had let the other messengers escape...He discerned fright in that tumult.” (205) Okonkwo killed the messenger to show the clan that they could stand up to the white men, but they were too afraid to even capture the other messengers. The people stood around Okonkwo in disbelief and actually let the other messengers go. When Okonkwo saw this, he knew that his cause was lost and knew that the clan would never go to war with the missionaries. He believed that the only way for the clan to defeat the white men was through war, but he now saw that others were too afraid to do so. The effect
Okonkwo is known throughout Umuofia to be extremely masculine. He rarely shows signs of fear or weakness. This is because Oknokwo promised himself he would be the complete opposite of his father Unoka. Unoka had passed away ten years prior to when the story takes place but he has always been remembered as a weak, lazy, poor man who could barely provide for his family. He was always in debt and didn't care to work, he would play his flute all day everyday if he was able to. "People laughed at him because he was a loafer, and they swore never to lend him any more money because he never paid back" (5). Unoka was the laugh of the town and Okonkwo would never allow himself be that.
It challenged his identity by losing his high title in the clan due to the change in the village as well as new customs. He responded to the clash of cultures by attempting to encourage others to fight in his mission to get rid of the Western influences in the Ibo community. Because he failed to do so, he lost hope and refused to accept the new culture which caused him to hang himself. The conflict between Okonkwo and his clan’s decision to change their way of living was portrayed through characterization and plot development. Achebe gives the people of Africa a voice with Okonkwo’s character who stayed true to his roots. In Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe reveals to us Okonkwo’s response as the cultural collision of the English and Ibo challenged his sense of
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.
…the missionary had immediately paid him a visit. He had just sent Okonkwo's son, Nwoye, who was now called Isaac, to the new training college for teachers in Umuru. And he had hoped that Okonkwo would be happy to hear of it. But Okonkwo had driven him away with the threat that if he came into his compound again he would be carried out of it. (157)
Okonkwo’s determination to succeed in life and to not fail leads to his fatal downfall in the end of the novel. His inability to adapt to colonization and his failure to follow the morals of many of the morals of the Ibo culture also are an important key leading to his downfall. Okonkwo was willing to go to war against the missionaries, with or without the clan. He made it clear that he believed the missionaries were in the wrong for trying to change Umuofia. Since the clan wanted no part in the war with the missionaries, Okonkwo took action into his own hands and murdered the head messenger. During the killing of the messenger, Okonkwo had a moment of realization: “He knew that Umuofia would not go to war. He knew because they had let the other messengers escape. They had broken into tumult instead of action” (Achebe 205). Okonkwo finally understands that he doesn’t have support from his fellow clansmen anymore and he feels as if he loses his place in society. Instead of backing up Okonkwo and his decision to murder the messenger, the clan stood in both confusion and disorder and questioned, “ ‘Why did [Okonkwo] do it?’ ” (Achebe 205). Okonkwo’s impulsiveness causes the clansmen to question Okonkwo’s violent actions against the messenger. Throughout the entire novel, Okonkwo struggles to accept the missionaries and the changes that they
Later Okonkwo’s oldest son Nwoye was absorbed into the white people’s growing church system and abandoned his native Ibo culture. Nwoye had doubted the Ibo culture ever since Ikemfuna’s death. Okonkwo heard about his actions he became extremely furious and confronted Nwoye about what he had heard about him earlier that day saying, “Where have you been? Answer me before I kill you!” (Page 151) Nwoye decided to leave his family and fueled Okonkwo’s hatred for the white people even more than before by portraying to his younger sons, “You have all seen the great abomination of your brother. Now he is no longer my son or your brother.” (Page 172) Not only had they cause the extinction of a native nearby village, but they had caused separation between groups. From this moment onwards Okonkwo does not believe that the whites can live and thrive in Umuofia peacefully without causing conflict and decides to be put into action to stop these men from the destruction of their culture. This caused Okonkwo to be madly insane towards the white people when he returns home to Umuofia because of his
Okonkwo lived in constant terror. In Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart, the tough, stalwart Okonkwo has the fear of failure and weakness dominate his life. Though he may not be completely aware of it, he lives in fear of failure and weakness which leads to his destruction. Okonkwo lives in a society where masculinity is seen as something extremely important. He feels like he has to prove his masculinity and assert his dominance at every point in order to not be challenged by anyone.
Since his childhood, Okonkwo has always been ashamed of his father, Unoka. Unoka was rarely able to feed his children, which made Okonkwo scared and embarrassed. When he went out into Umuofia, he found that the villagers had very similar opinions towards his father. As...
The novel Things Fall Apart written by Chinua Achebe tells the tale of an Umuofia warrior Okonkwo, a member of a lower Nigerian tribe. Okonkwo is a loyal member of the tribe, but some clans people perceive Okonkwo as a blood thirsty hothead. The death of the village elder’s son results in Okonkwo and his family’s exile for seven years. During his exile a young boy who is living with Okonkwo and his family goes on his own mission to find his mother where some of Okonkwo’s fellow clansmen attack the boy. Not wanting to look weak in front of his peers Okonkwo kills the boy.
Okonkwo is first affected by the westerner’s cultural influence during his isolation. When Okonkwo accidently shot a child, causing him to be banished to his motherland where he hears the news of the white men and their influence within Umuofia. However, this does not truly affect Okonkwo until his son Nwoye is “among the missionaries in Umuofia” (Achebe 143). This is the
In the novel, Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe the cultural collision challenged Okonkwo’s identity because his culture portrays him and when his culture pushes him away he feels nothing without it. Even though he feels hopeless, he is still a leader, and a leader must obey his culture and tribe. However Okonkwo realizes that he can no longer function within his changing society. The foreigners had such a tremendous effect on his tribe that many of his clansmen decided to abandon their ways and adapt to those of the white men. In the novel the role of customs and traditions is incredibly important and decides the fate of men, women, and children. Okonkwo, a warrior of the Ibo tribe who holds a high position in his society, struggles to understand and adapt to his environment as the white men introduce a new culture on his people. This problem brings Okonkwo into conflict with his friends, villagers and family.
Okonkwo was ashamed of him and did everything possible to never end up like his father. When the narrator stated, “With a father like Unoka, Okonkwo did not have the start in life which many young men had. But he threw himself into it like one possessed. And indeed he was possessed by the fear of his father’s contemptible life and shameful death” (pg. 18). The.
Chinua Achebe’s novel, Things Fall Apart, follows the tragic life of Okonkwo, a man who suffers a miserable fate due to the fear of failure that controls every action he makes. Though the fear of failure acts as motivation to become a successful and respected man at first, it later cripples Okonkwo in such a way that failure ultimately defines his life. Okonkwo is constantly afraid of being a victim of weakness and desperately tries to remain a strong and unyielding man. It is his overwhelming fear of weakness that causes things to fall apart in his life, as his attempts to avoid failure and weakness eventually lead to the ultimate defeat: his shameful suicide. Fear of failure and weakness dominates Okonkwo throughout his life.
This crime from Okonkwo left him away from his homeland for seven years, and during his escape, his old culture would soon be evolved. This unintentional action also played a domino effect, first moving his family away and having his home destroyed, then having his son, Nwoye turn back on him and become a missionary in Umuofia joining the white culture. Achebe describes how Nwoye declines Okonkwo being his father towards Obierika who is doing favors for the family (144). Hearing this, his father seems to not be harmed and is disappointed in his son. These missionaries began assembling into Umuofia, convincing the clansmen that there is only one God, and He is the creator of everything unlike what the clansmen had believed. They had a god for everything, but they now were being persuaded. Hearing this, Okonkwo is in shock and believes that the only way to solve the issue is to chase the men out of the village some way (Achebe 146). Nwoye is attracted to the new religion but has yet to reveal it to his father for fear of him. When Okonkwo heard the news, he is infuriated with anger. “… sprang to his feet and gripped him by the neck”
Okonkwo takes his life as he sees himself a lone warrior in a society of weaklings. This isolation is truly imposed by his decision of how to handle the conflicts which he encounters. His unitary channeling of emotions, cultural inflexibility, and tendency to seek physical confrontation are compiled into a single notion. The idealized vision of a warrior by which Okonkwo lives is the instrument that leads to the climax of Achebe's novel, Things Fall Apart: Okonkwo's demise.