In pre- colonial Africa, villages lived gracefully following their own culture they created. In the piece of literature Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, the setting of the book took place in this time period. Each African Village had its evil forest and the villagerswere polytheistic, like Umuofia, for instance. Although, many people respected the way they lived, like Okonkwo, missionaries from England soon took over. By the end of the novel Okonkwo committed suicide. The person to blame wasn’t just a single, but a whole, which was Umuofia. Umuofia, Okonkwo’s own village, lead to his suicide because Umuofia put Okonkwo in exile, allowed missionaries to take over, and ignored Okonkwo after coming back from exile. Okonkwo respected Umuofia very highly even when he was put to exile. Because Okonkwo was put to exile by Umuofia he lost everything. For example, when he went to Mbanta, his motherland, he was given “a plot of ground on which to built his compound, and two or three pieces of land on which to farm during the coming plant season”(130). Being given this little land showed how lowly the people of his motherland had thought of him in contrary to how people in Umuofia thought of him. He lost his wealth and needed a new reputation starting in a new village. Furthermore, he also lost his status starting out in a new place. “His life had been ruled by great passion - to become one of the lords of the clan… Then everything had been broken. He had been cast out of his clan like a fish onto a dry, sandy beach, panting”(131). Okonkwo was barely an inch away to become one of the lords of Umuofia, but after his exile all his chances were diminished. This gave him one less thing to live for, contributing to factors of Okonkwo’s suici... ... middle of paper ... ...as listened to me”(195), Okonkwo said. The clansmen were afraid to kill the white man even though they had the chance because of the consequences they would face. Umuofia’s decision of ignoring Okonkwo and not going to war with the missionaries contributed to Okonkwo’s suicide. If Umuofia went with the idea of war Okonkwo wouldn’t have needed to take matters into his own hands. Overall, Okonkwo disliked change. Umuofia went through tons of changes but in lieu of coping with the changes he chose to commit suicide. If Umuofia put up a fight against the missionaries it would have shown their dedication to Umuofia, what they lived with for the past years of their life. No one had as much dedication to their clan like Okonkwo. Okonkwo would have been alive if Umuofia didn’t put him in exile, allow the missionaries in, and not listen to him when he came back from exile.
In these few chapters that we read, we have already learned a lot about Okonkwo, his life, and how he shows sympathy to some, but to others he is heartless. Okonkwo is other wise known as an unsympathetic person. Okonkwo is a clan leader of umuofia who holds many titles and is well known among his people. Okonkwo's daily life consists of tending to the three yam farms he has produced and to make numerous offerings to numerous gods and to help himself and his family. Okonkwo's personality is hard driven, since his father did not provide for him and his family Okonkwo had to start man hood early and this led him to be very successful in his adulthood, Okonkwo is an unsympathetic character who only shows sympathy rarely because he believes it's a sign of weakness Okonkwo's family relationships make him a sympathetic character because when his children show signs of manliness or do their jobs right he shows sympathy towards them. He is an unsympathetic character because whenever he get a little mad he has to take his anger out on something and that is usually vented by beating his wife's.
Some people might say that Okonkwo was just trying to protect the tradition and cultural of his tribal village but in actuality this is far from the truth. When Okonkwo cut down the guard, he made the swift assumption that his clansmen were as passionate about fighting colonialism as him and would follow him into war. When he found otherwise, he could not understand what had happened to his village. The next place he was seen was hanging from a noose in a selfish show of hypocrisy. In the end, Okonkwo's status among his tribe counted for nothing because his own despair over the colonization of his village led him to kill himself. His whole life Okonkwo strived to not to look weak like his father, but in the end he took the cowards way out, suicide. Suicide was a great sin against the Earth. Because he took his own life, Okonkwo, a great leader of Umuofia, had to be buried by strangers. All of his work and perseverance amounted to nothing because of what he had done.
Set in Africa in the 1890s, Chinua Achebe's ‘Things Fall Apart’ is about the tragedy of Okonkwo during the time Christian missionaries arrived and polluted the culture and traditions of many African tribes. Okonkwo is a self-made man who values culture, tradition, and, above all else, masculinity. Okonkwo’s attachment to the Igbo culture and tradition, and his own extreme emphasis on manliness, is the cause of his fall from grace and eventual death.
He was in great conflict with the ideas of the white men and the missionaries. Okonkwo saw that their beliefs had not only changed the daily life of the Ibo, but it also changed the people themselves: “He mourned for the warlike men of Umuofia, who had so unaccountably become soft like women” (Achebe 183). The author uses strong diction to compare the men before and after colonization. This quote also portrays Okonkwo’s opinion towards the cultural collision. He values strength and masculinity immensely because of his fear of appearing weak like his father Unoka. When he describes that the men of Umuofia changed to be soft like women, this shows how much he dishonors the Western ideas and how it has taken over the village. He made an attempt to get rid of the Western influence by urging the tribe to fight like men, but they refuse to. He was determined and still attempted to furthermore encourage the people of Umuofia to revolt against the new culture. He realizes that his attempts to return the village back to the way it was before were futile. He knew that Christianity was tearing his people apart, but knew he was incapable of making change to help his people. Okonkwo then starts to feel hopeless and abandoned by his clan, which causes him to commit suicide by hanging himself: “Obierika… turned suddenly to the District Commissioner and said ferociously: ‘That man was one of the greatest men
... middle of paper ... ... Okonkwo tries to keep his tribe and his tribe's integrity by standing up to the British. The British are a powerful force who has already wiped out an entire town that rebelled. No one in Umofia wants a repetition of that situation.
Okonkwo is “a man of action, a man of war” (7) and a member of high status in the Igbo village. He holds the prominent position of village clansman due to the fact that he had “shown incredible prowess in two intertribal wars” (5). Okonkwo’s hard work had made him a “wealthy farmer” (5) and a recognized individual amongst the nine villages of Umuofia and beyond. Okonkwo’s tragic flaw isn’t that he was afraid of work, but rather his fear of weakness and failure which stems from his father’s, Unoka, unproductive life and disgraceful death. “Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and weakness….It was not external but lay deep within himself. It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father.” Okonkwo’s father was a lazy, carefree man whom had a reputation of being “poor and his wife and children had just barely enough to eat... they swore never to lend him any more money because he never paid back.” (5) Unoka had never taught Okonkwo what was right and wrong, and as a result Okonkwo had to interpret how to be a “good man”. Okonkwo’s self-interpretation leads him to conclude that a “good man” was someone who was the exact opposite of his father and therefore anything that his father did was weak and unnecessary.
You never know how much you care about your culture until people try to take it away from you. Okonkwo was a prideful jerk as moste would describe him, who was once exiled for seven years for his unlawful actions. When he finally returned to Umuofia, white men come trying to change things and take land. Okonkwo stepped up to help lead his clan but ended up with the same mistakes he used to make, which connects to violence. He then gives in to his biggest fear, weakness. When stress and trying to step up and change to somebody your not takes toll over you, sometimes one just can’t over turn it. This was his reaction to the cultural collision of the white men and Igbo people. This is important because that cultural collision impacted many people on both sides of the dispute. Okonkwo’s reaction to this collision showed how one can connect back to old habits and how cultural collisions mostly never end well no matter what. There will always be that person offended, killed, or even that person to take their own life because of
The above passages were taken from the end of chapter three, part one. After finishing reading this book and then going back through it, I found these passages very ironic in regards to how the story eventually ended. Okonkwo believed that because he was such a fierce fighter, he could conquer anything life threw at him. However, it was his fierce, proud, fighting attitude that was his demise in the face of uncontrollable circumstances in the end. Okonkwo believed that war and brute fighting would fix everything. He was a proud and stubborn man constantly struggling to improve his standing in the tribal community. Okonkwo also had intense pride for his tribe and way of life. He believed it was the right way of life and not to be questioned. Everyone was supposed to fear war with Umofia due to their fierce warriors and greatness in battle. When the white men not only did not fear them, but openly threatened the tribal way of life, Okonkwo prepared to handle the situation the only way he knew how. He wanted to got to war against the new white invaders, chasing them from tribal lands and ending the threat of different ways of life.
Okonkwo is often described as being similar to characters in Greek tragedies. Okonkwo knew that the end of his clan was coming, and that they would do nothing to prevent it from happening. He took his life out of desperation. He had struggled his whole life to become a respected member of his community, and suddenly his world is turned upside down and changed forever because of an accident. Okonkwo sees that he is fighting a losing battle, so he quits. Suicide was one of the biggest offenses that could be committed against the earth, and Okonkwo?s own clansmen could not bury him. Okonkwo?s death symbolizes the end of patriarchy in Umuofia. The last page of the book is from the point of view of the white Commissioner, who notes that he wants to include a paragraph on Okonkwo?s life in his book entitled The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of Lower Niger. Okonkwo?s struggles, triumphs and defeats are all reduced to a paragraph, much like his culture and society will be reduced.
...s return to Umuofia at the end of his exile when he returns home. The white men send their a messenger to the village. Okonkwo is still enraged about Nwoye's conversion. He sprang to his feet as soon as he saw who it was. He confronted the head messenger, trembling with hate, unable to utter a word. The man was fearless and stood his ground, his four men lined up behind him. “In a flash Okonkwo drew his machete. . . . Okonkwo’s machete descended twice and the man's head lay beside his uniformed body” (204).
In Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe writes how the arrival of the Christian missionaries in Umuofia intensify Okonkwo's internal conflict between changing as a new person and commit to the new changes by following the missionaries religion (which in the Igbo culture, it’s consider as being weak) vs. going his own way and follow the Igbo religion and be "manly". Okonkwo was a respected and honored man who had a lot of prosperity, but sadly his choice at the end of the book was to commit suicide. His choice had an negative impact on his clan because people look up to Okonkwo as an exemplary to the Igbo clan. Okonkwo find himself unable to adapt to the changing times as the white man comes to live among the Umuofians. As it becomes clear that you need to change to adapt to the changing society or fight for how it was before, Okonkwo realizes that he no longer can compliance the missionaries’ regulations and can’t do nothing about it, realize he can no longer can be able to function within his changing society.
As you see, Okonkwo was a deprived man after hearing about the whites expanding their beliefs and customs to Umuofia. Being unable to contain it, he had no choice but to give in. Okonkwo wanted to go to war and fight the invading Europeans, but he soon realized that he was the only one hungry for war. “I shall fight alone if I choose” (Achebe 201). Being the only one seeking for revenge, he had no choice but to behead the head messenger who was trying to end a clan meeting. Letting the other messengers escape, Okonkwo’s visual was the truth. “He knew that Umuofia would not go to war” (Achebe 205). Everything that he stood for was now distant. His once powerful and running clan was now weak and resistant to fight off enemies. What was the point to live when everything else had failed him and he could do nothing to resolve it? He struggled with the changes occurring in the tribe. He was known as a very strong and honorable tribesman, but when the whites arrived promoting Christianity and other tribe members began to change as a result, even his own son, he could not bear the change. While viewing the others as weak, like his father, he tries to remain strong against change however he is the only one. Killing the messenger was the last attempt to try and save the tribe from the influence of the white man. Seeing the others not join in his action, he loses hope and in desperation ends his life
The character of Okonkwo in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart was driven by fear, a fear of change and losing his self-worth. He needed the village of Umuofia, his home, to remain untouched by time and progress because its system and structure were the measures by which he assigned worth and meaning in his own life. Okonkwo required this external order because of his childhood and a strained relationship with his father, which was also the root of his fears and subsequent drive for success. When the structure of Umuofia changed, as happens in society, Okonkwo was unable to adapt his methods of self-evaluation and ways of functioning in the world; the life he was determined to live could not survive a new environment and collapsed around him.
Okonkwo is known throughout Umuofia to be extremely masculine. He rarely shows signs of fear or weakness. This is because Oknokwo promised himself he would be the complete opposite of his father Unoka. Unoka had passed away ten years prior to when the story takes place but he has always been remembered as a weak, lazy, poor man who could barely provide for his family. He was always in debt and didn't care to work, he would play his flute all day everyday if he was able to. "People laughed at him because he was a loafer, and they swore never to lend him any more money because he never paid back" (5). Unoka was the laugh of the town and Okonkwo would never allow himself be that.
Okonkwo’s determination to succeed in life and to not fail leads to his fatal downfall in the end of the novel. His inability to adapt to colonization and his failure to follow the morals of many of the morals of the Ibo culture also are an important key leading to his downfall. Okonkwo was willing to go to war against the missionaries, with or without the clan. He made it clear that he believed the missionaries were in the wrong for trying to change Umuofia. Since the clan wanted no part in the war with the missionaries, Okonkwo took action into his own hands and murdered the head messenger. During the killing of the messenger, Okonkwo had a moment of realization: “He knew that Umuofia would not go to war. He knew because they had let the other messengers escape. They had broken into tumult instead of action” (Achebe 205). Okonkwo finally understands that he doesn’t have support from his fellow clansmen anymore and he feels as if he loses his place in society. Instead of backing up Okonkwo and his decision to murder the messenger, the clan stood in both confusion and disorder and questioned, “ ‘Why did [Okonkwo] do it?’ ” (Achebe 205). Okonkwo’s impulsiveness causes the clansmen to question Okonkwo’s violent actions against the messenger. Throughout the entire novel, Okonkwo struggles to accept the missionaries and the changes that they