Who Is Okonkwo's Identity In Things Fall Apart

Things Fall Apart Character Analysis: Nwoye ¨The words of the hymn were like the drops of frozen rain melting on the dry palate of the panting earth. Nwoye’s callow mind was greatly puzzled¨ (Achebe 174). The young Nwoye struggled with his identity in Chinua Achebe’s classic bestselling novel, Things Fall Apart. Nwoye was the oldest son of a well renowned man of the tribe. Although his father, Okonkwo, had many high expectations for him, Nwoye did not share the same views and values as Okonkwo and the other clan members. For that reason, he was scarred by his father’s beatings and the death of his surrogate brother, Ikemefuna. As he battled to find his identity in the Ibo culture, a new culture attempted to take over the village, and Nwoye discovered a new identity in the new religion of Christianity.

Okonkwo had many expectations for him because he was his oldest son and expected Nwoye to be as strong and successful as he was when he was young. Unfortunately, Nwoye did not meet his standards and instead met his father’s fears of having a failure of a son. As stated in Chapter Two, “[Nwoye] was already causing his father great anxiety for his incipient laziness. At any rate, that was how it looked to his father, and he sought to correct him by constant nagging and beating” (Achebe 13-14). Okonkwo thought that frequent punishments would cause Nwoye to become more masculine. His predictions did not come true. Instead Nwoye hid his true nature through an acts of masculinity such as belittling women and dismissing his mother and sisters in order to please his father. In the inside, he still yearned for his mother’s stories and hated the way his father had beaten his family. Nwoye was lost in finding himself in his home culture, but he was quietly attracted to the new churches that were rising up in his