Okonkwo As A Tragic Hero In Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

“In world mythology, there are countless examples of tragic characters whose greatest strength is also the source of their undoing. But the ancient Greeks and Romans also held the view that acceptance is the beginning of wisdom”(Simon Van Booy). Okonkwo was a very strong man physically, mentally, and emotionally. That was his biggest strength, but also the reason of his descent, which made him a tragic tragic hero. If Okonkwo would have accepted the fact that he was not as strong as he made himself out to be, maybe there would have been a different ending to the novel. Aristotle defines a tragic hero as, “A character that makes a judgment error that inevitably leads to his/her destruction.” This is essentially what Okonkwo does during the final events of his life. From the start of his life, Okonkwo was a very impressive figure because of

In many people’s eyes, Okonkwo was a hero because of his attributes to his tribe and his culture, but this was before the inevitable happened. In the novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, according to Aristotle’s standards, Okonkwo is a tragic hero because of his actions depicted within the story. Okonkwo was a man of greatness within is clan and essentially the tribe as an entirety. With this greatness came his great fall, though. This is what leads analyzers to perceive him to be a tragic hero. Okonkwo did not want to be thought of as weak by his people. He wanted to make sure that no one had the thought of comparing him to his father; weak, feminine, or gentle, even if that meant being part of something as wicked as killing a loved one. In the text it says, “He hear Ikemefuna cry, ‘My father they have killed me!’ as he ran towards him. Dazed with