Okonkwo Epic Hero

In Things Fall Apart, the narrator depicts Okonkwo as an epic hero. Okonkwo is not an ordinary central character in this tale. The narrator makes it clear that Okonkwo epitomizes strength, courage, and determination. This is demonstrated through the narrator’s voice/tone and strategies such as telling the story in third person omniscient and making a commitment to honesty and authenticity. Throughout the tale, the narrator’s voice indicates that they are proud, understanding, and sympathetic towards Okonkwo. This is evident when the narrator explicitly comments on Okonkwo’s shame with his father, a man who wasn’t seen as man enough to his son. "When Unoka died he had taken no title at all and he was heavily in debt. Any wonder then that his son Okonkwo was ashamed of him?" (Achebe, pg. 3). The tone in this rhetorical question shows understanding to Okonkwo’s situation, along with sympathy. In instances where the narrator was proud of Okonkwo, it is reflected in the description of Okonkwo’s war like abilities. “He was a man of action, a man of war” (Achebe, pg. 4). The phrasing of this statement exudes admiration and aids in the building of the epic hero title that the narrator is endorsing. Along with the voice, the narrator deploys the strategy

Revealing the ending of Okonkwo’s life was honest but obviously hurt the epic hero title. Because epic heroes are defined as those that navigate change at the level of society, guiding the community to a new understanding of itself, Okonkwo’s suicide went against this ideology. His death only served himself and not the community he once strongly advocated. Although the community was getting away from him, there could have been ways to resist the colonialists in ways that he probably would not have seen as masculine enough. This could perhaps be done through communicating, a skill his father had but didn’t