Who Is Okonkwo A Foil In Things Fall Apart

The protagonist of Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo, is a diverse character built to highlight the flaws of his culture while acting still as a foil to European Cultural ideals and contrasting the benefits and detriments of both societies as a whole. Okonkwo is a rich father with many wives. He is highly driven towards success (which is shown from the very beginning of the story to be due to his father’s laziness) and his physical prowess is unmatched in the nine villages. Okonkwo is rich, powerful, and has lots of wives. That is approximately all he has going for him.
Okonkwo, alongside his desire for power and strength, also becomes absolutely ruthless. He treats his wives as property, even if doing so is the norm in his culture, and

beats one of them during a village-wide week of peace, prompting punishment from the village elders. Okonkwo views his strength above all else and is entirely afraid to show any emotion whatsoever. He is so focused on being strong and manly that he ends up suffering for it and having to silently suffer in guilt after participating in the slaughter of Ikemafuna, a young, innocent boy who he viewed as almost a son. He also chose to partake in this so none of his peers would think he was weak. It may be a cultural divide, but, considering the way Okonkwo’s peers spoke to him, it is unlikely they would judge him for not wanting to partake in the slaughter of a young boy. While Okonkwo’s character flaws mostly are a conglomeration of his cultural ideals and the inevitable conclusion of his tribe’s expectations of men, he is still needlessly violent in his pursuits.