Steph And Okonkwo In Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

If one has a personal flaw, they should try to subdue it, especially if it would eventually kill them. Okonkwo and Steph don't. Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart is about Okonkwo's struggle against his tribe, foreigners, and himself. Okonkwo often loses his temper, which leads him to rashness. Katey Schultz's “Deuce Out” is about Steph attempting to get through life and eventually joining the army while her brother is fighting a war. While her brother is gone, she begins to dislike the way her life is going, and decides to join the army after her brother. In “Deuce out”, Steph has the character flaw of acting before thinking, and assuming that what they did is right. In Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo has the same flaw. Steph and Okonkwo both display their flaw at the beginning of the story. When her brother leaves, Steph decides to join the army. At the army recruitment office, she says “I'd prefer not to tell my parents I'm enlisting”(Schultz 582). She is too

Steph's final moments are shocking. She describes it as how “the bullets danced around me, never hitting their target. Then, finally, half a dozen of them did”(Schultz 586). Her flaw of impulsiveness led her to join the army, but she didn't think about the potential consequences. Okonkwo kills a man, letting his actions get the better of reasoning one final time. Achebe depicts Okonkwo's last stand by telling how “Okonkwo's machete descended twice and the man's head lay beside his uniformed body...He knew Umuofia would not go to war...He wiped his machete on the sand and went away”(Achebe 204-205). The other members of Okonkwo's tribe have reasoned that it would be a bad idea to go to war, but Okonkwo lets his emotions take control, and he acted without thinking once more. After walking away, he hangs himself. Both characters never think about the implications of their actions, and they doom themselves because of