Okonkwo in Thing Fall Apart

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"That man was one of the greatest men in Umuofia. You drove him to kill himself; and now he will be buried like a dog..." Things Fall Apart written by Chinua Achebe is the story of trials and tribulations that the main character, Okonkwo, has to overcome in anyway that he can. Some cultures may have seen Okonkwo as a warrior, a strong man, a manly man, a great farmer etc., but I do not believe he was actually as great as he was made out to be and I don't think that his culture viewed him as all that wonderful either.

In the beginning of Things Fall Apart we are introduced to the main character by a flashback of a wrestling match against the undefeated Amalinze the Cat. As Achebe describes each man there seems to be less of a chance of Okonkwo winning yet "in the end Okonkwo threw the Cat." After winning this fight the clansmen and villagers view Okonkwo as the strongest man which was the first title that he acquired.

Okonkwo's actions in the story are very similarly related to one another. Every one of

his actions relate back to the fact that he did not want to turn into the kind of man that his father

was before he died. He hated how his father was lazy and in so much debt. But most of all he hated the fact that when his father died, he was without any kind of title. That was not the man that Okonkwo wanted to become and he was willing to do everything in his power to keep himself from losing his title in the village.

There were three main events in Things Fall Apart that I think really emphasize the point that Okonkwo was not really the man that Achebe tried to make him out to be. With the start of these events lead to a serious snowball effect causing one horrible thing to happen after another until Okonkwo could not cause any more harm to anyone because there is really nothing that you can do when you are dead.

The very first event that lead to Okonkwo's demise, in my eyes, was when Ogbuefi Ezeudu told Okonkwo that the Oracle has said that Ikemefuna, the boy who had been given to the village after a settlement with a neighboring tribe, must be killed.

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