Okonkwo's Identity

The worst feeling in the world is to not belong anywhere. That is exactly what Okonkwo, the main character of Chinua Achebe’s novel, Things Fall Apart, faces. The story begins by describing the life of Okonkwo. He starts off poor and with no status, and as the story progresses he works hard to build his reputation and a family for himself. However, things start to go sour for Okonkwo when he repeatedly breaks the rules of his clan, which eventually leads to a seven-year exile to his motherland. It is when he is in his motherland that missionaries from Britain arrive in the area. The arrival of the missionaries in Umuofia caused a great cultural shock in the area, and Achebe’s character, Okonkwo, was faced with a struggle of identity.
The main

His identity comes mainly from his pride in his home and his pride in his children. Okonkwo is already sent to live in his motherland, and this separation from his home already made the character feel displaced and uneasy. Then, his own son Nwoye leaves the family to join the missionaries. This affects Okonkwo a lot more than he lets on. He feels that there must be something wrong with his chi. The author writes, “He saw clearly in it the finger of his personal god or chi. For how else could he explain his great misfortune and exile and now his despicable son’s behavior?” (Achebe 152). This shows how Okonkwo is losing the trust he had in his good chi because of the cultural conflict the missionaries created. Then at the end of the novel, Okonkwo kills a messenger, thinking that it will be the spark that would light the fire of war in his tribe. His home had always been quick to fight battles to protect themselves, but Umuofia does not fight the missionaries. In that moment, when nobody supports Okonkwo in his violent act, he realizes that his tribe really had lost their warrior mindset. His home was no longer familiar to him, and his child had left him for the missionaries. Okonkwo’s sense of identity was shattered because of this cultural shock. His response to the missionaries did not only affect the other characters in the novel,

As the main character, he shows how the conflict of cultures destroyed families and many of the men’s sense of identity as warriors. Okonkwo’s family really does fall apart all in the span of a few years. Nwoye leaves to join the missionaries, and Ezinma is married off as soon as the family arrives back in Umuofia. The arrival of the missionaries split apart Okonkwo’s family, and shows Achebe’s point that cultural invasions like that in the novel causes division among the people in an area, and can even destroy families. Another way that Okonkwo’s response develops the author’s point in the novel is when he loses his sense of identity. Everything that he held close to his heart was changed. When the missionaries first arrive in Abame, they are met with violence; the people kill the messenger almost immediately. However, the missionaries’ response displays their superiority in technology and firepower. The author writes, “The three white men and a very large number of other men surrounded the market… And they began to shoot. Everybody was killed, except the old and the sick who were at home and a handful of men and women whose chi were wide awake and brought them out of the market’” (Achebe 140). This example of the missionaries’ power frightens most of the Ibo tribe into submission. The men lose their sense of identity as warriors. The novel wants to show the