An Alternative Hero : Chinua Achebe 's Things Fall Apart

Okonkwo life is “dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness” (Achebe 13). When Okonkwo was a boy, his playmates teased him calling, saying that his father was agbala. Okonkwo’s father, Unoka, was lazy. He did not work on his farm; he died in great debt. He did not acquire a single title. He did not have a barn to pass down to his son. Unoka is a type of man who is scorned in Umofia. He is seen as weak and effeminate. As Okonkwo grows older, he is determined not become a failure like his father. His father was weak; he will be strong. His father was lazy; he will be hard-working. Okonkwo earned his fame by defeating the reigning wrestling champion. Okonkwo diligently plants yam, building a successful farm. He builds himself an obi, has three wives and many children. His fame “rested on solid personal achievements” (Achebe 3). Okonkwo will not let one womanly trait sully his reputation. Therefore, he “hate[d] everything that his father Unoka had loved” (Achebe 13). One of these was gentleness. Okonkwo refuses to show any signs of emotion, except his temper. He

Okonkwo is a wealthy and respected warrior of the Umuofia clan. Umuofia is one of the nine clans that are connected. The village consists of Igbo people in the African country of Nigeria. His fame became solely from personal achievements. Okonkwo was much unlike his father who was poor, a debtor, and basically a failure to his people. When his father died all, he took with him was debts that were never paid. In the village of Umuofia, a man is judged according to his worth and not according to the worth of his father. Okonkwo had great things planned for his life and wanted to be the nothing like his father whom he was so ashamed of. He had to start from scratch because his father wasn’t able to leave

Answer: In Chinua Achebe’s novel “Things Fall Apart” Okonkwo is a tragic hero. Aristotle’s Poetics defines a Tragic Hero as a good man of high status who displays a tragic flaw ‘hamartia’ and experiences a dramatic reversal ‘peripeteia’, as well as an intense moment of recognition ‘anagnorisis’. Okonkwo is a leader and hardworking member of the Igbo community of Umuofia whose tragic flaw is his great fear of weakness and failure. Okonkwo’s fall from grace in the Igbo community and eventual suicide, makes Okonkwo a tragic hero by Aristotle’s definition.

Okonkwo achieves respect and high social status through his own heroic efforts despite being left with nothing but the dishonorable reputation of his “lazy and improvident” father. Toiling in the fields, enduring droughts, exhibiting fearless on the battlefield, and fueled by a burning desire to succeed, Okonkwo becomes a hero in Umuofia. Okonkwo’s success stems from his hard-work and perseverance, which he achieves in spite of his father’s shortcomings. He “lay[s] the foundations of a prosperous future” by slowly and painfully working like “one possessed” in order to escape “his father’s contemptible life and shameful death.” Okonkwo, so “possessed” with escaping the lingering reputation of his father, does anything in his power to earn

In Chinua Achebe's novel, Things Fall Apart, the impact of British Colonialism in Africa is critiqued through the story of an Igbo man, Okonkwo. Okonkwo is an extremely masculine man who has but one fear, the fear of being weak. Throughout the novel, his actions are motivated by this fear which defines him characteristically as on overly masculine man. This over masculinity is Okonkwo's flaw and it drives his moods and actions, ultimately leading to his demise. In this respect, Okonkwo plays the role of a tragic hero driven by his flaw which leads to his downfall.

From the very first sentences in the novel we see Okonkwo as this very strong and successful man, he is the epitome of “manliness” In the Igbo society. He became who he was by seeing his father, Unoka, as a failure who held no titles and couldn’t feed his family. Okonkwo was determined to be nothing like him as we can see on page 7 “When Unoka died he had taken no title at all and he was heavily in debt. Any wonder then that his son Okonkwo was ashamed of hem?” This drive to be the manliest man possible led Okonkwo to do some very brutal things like take five human heads in war. He even killed his adopted son, Ikemefuna, in fear of looking weak to his clansmen.

For all of his desire to be strong, Okonkwo is caught up by the constant fear of being perceived as weak. He is afraid of failure and afraid of being considered weak. This fear drives him to do whatever he can to not become a failure like his father which ironically contributes to his death. While Okonkwo was a strong and important figure in his tribe, he had to keep his reputation that way by making some hard decisions. One of them was when he had to kill Ikemefuna, a young boy from the neighboring tribe. Okonkwo started accepting the decision to kill Ikemefuna because he started to call Okonkwo father. He had to keep his own valor intact and kill the boy to prevent himself from showing any weakness, but deep down, Okonkwo was really upset because of what he did which was ironic, “’When did you become a shivering old woman,' Okonkwo asked himself, 'you, who are known in all the nine villages for your valor in war? How can a man who has killed five men in battle fall to pieces because he has added a boy to their number? Okonkwo, you have become a woman indeed.'" (Achebe 65). He continued to roll downhill when the white man comes to try and convert Okonkwo’s tribe. Okonkwo responds by killing one of the messengers that were sent. This cause Okonkwo's own tribe to question his actions. “"Okonkwo stood looking at the dead man. He knew that Umuofia would not go to war. He knew because they had let the other messengers escape.

Okonkwo's early success is recognized as the result of hard work, "That was not luck. At the most one could say that his chi or personal god was good" (19). But Okonkwo goes too far. He is harsh and unkind to his family and less successful clansmen, thus undermining his self-made fortune.

To begin, Okonkwo is shown to be a self made, well respected member of the Umuofia clan. Though, he seems stern, most of his life is dictated with fear. For example,the passage states “ And indeed he was possessed by the fear of his father’s contemptible life and shameful death.”(Achebe,18/1). This helps the reader understand that Okonkwo faces many challenges in life to prove to his village and the people themselves that he is nothing like his father, Unoka and is haunted by the fact that one day he will become a man whom he promised he will never become. The passage states “ Dazed with fear, Okonkwo drew his machete and cut him down. He was afraid of being thought weak.”(Achebe,61/1). This helps the reader understand the reason why

Okonkwo has many errors judging the complexity of many big decisions. He also has a major weakness, that being his pride and constant battle-ready state. These end up being a major downfall in his life. Ikemefuna ends up being a part of Okonkwo’s errors in pride when the Oracle decrees Ikemefuna’s death. One blow from a machete didn’t kill him and having seen this, “Okonkwo drew his machete and cut him down. He was afraid of being thought weak” (61). This quote shows Okonkwo’s kryptonite, being thought of as a weak person. This would eventually lead to him and five others being captured by the missionaries and brought to a jail. “The six men ate nothing throughout that day and the next. They were not even given water to drink. ‘We should have killed the white man if you had listened to me,’ Okonkwo snarled” (195). This quote shows Okonkwo’s failure to judge just how serious the situation is with him saying what they should have done is listened to him. Both of these events lead Okonkwo down a dark path. While taking some of the missionaries on a path to find Okonkwo, they see his body hanging from a tree. Obierika, a long-time friend of Okonkwo starts to yell at the missionaries, blaming them for his death by saying, “That man was one of the greatest in Umuofia. You drove him to kill himself; and now he will be buried like a dog” (208). This quote shows the end of a long chain of events that drove Okonkwo to his destruction of

First, Okonkwo starts off as a poor child, as shown when the book states, “Okonkwo did not have the start in life which many young men usually had, he did not inherit a barn from his father. There was no barn to inherit” showing that Okonkwo and his family were penurious, compared to others in the Igbo tribe (Achebe 16). Eventually, through his hard work and effort, he became a noble leader, which emphasizes his role as a tragic hero. Throughout the story Okonkwo goes through many challenges, but “In the face of futility, however, he maintains his nobility of character”(Gaydosik).

One of the main causes of Okonkwo’s downfall is his fear of being like his father, who was weak and considered a failure. Okonkwo is told that Ikemefuna,

When we think about a European colonialist world view it is often based on judging a society by two major assumptions. These assumptions are the idea that other societies are filled with violent people without manners, and that their religious practices are a hedonistic affront to their own religion. These assumptions make it easy for European Colonialists to somewhat invade a land, and try to take it over. This practice of invading a foreign country is made even easier by the way European Colonialists dehumanize the native population and convince themselves that they are helping. Chinua Achebe’s book Things Fall Apart attempts to correct these misguided views of African societies by portraying a more complex culture that values peace, and the art of conversation. Achebe also tries to portray the idea that not all European people they come in contact with are aggressive, and misconstrued in their view of the African societies. Achebe tries to show us the value of his society through repeated views into conversations, religious practices, and encounters between people.Ultimately Achebe tries to show us that Africa’s complex cultures deserve more credit than taking up a chapter or two in a European colonialist’s book. This attempt at showing Africa as a complex group of diverse cultures goes directly against everything that European colonizers are working for because it humanizes a society they want to dehumanize.

The description given early in the novel clearly establishes his character as being a strong and wealthy man who is well respected among the rest of the tribe due to his superior fighting abilities and his influential personality. Having achieved such elite status within the Umuofia clan, Okonkwo appears to be old-fashioned as it is seen in his approach in raising his family and tribal people. However, Okonkwo’s character changes incrementally with the emergence of a boy, Ikemefuna, from a neighboring village, who was brought to him because of his brutal attack against his wife Ojiugo during the ‘week of peace’. Amongst the Umuofia clan, the ‘week of peace’ is a tribal ritual whose conditions are not to complete any evil sins in a certain week span. After having accepted Ikemefuna into the family, Okonkwo experiences a shift in his mental state. Shortly hereafter, he questions this change, which demonstrates his lack of willingness to change which is clearly demonstrated in the book in several different ways like in chapter Eight, Okonkwo proclaims to himself, “When did you become a shivering old woman, you, who are known in all nine villages for your valour in war” (Achebe 56). This represents that his character has become a weaker, less influential individual amongst the nine tribes where he is well known. Symbolically, this depicts a fragile reputation in Okonkwo’s status within the community to which he belongs.

On the other hand, another characteristic of Okonkwo that causes him to be seen as a tragic hero is his struggle to deal with the crumbling Igbo culture around him. Upon his return to Umuofia from his motherland, everything has changed among the Igbo people. The white men had completely torn apart a culture which at one point seemed to be so strong. Some had even been converted into Christians and almost everyone was questioning their own beliefs. According to Stephen Criswell, when Okonkwo returned, he had a decision to make between standing up for what he believed in and against what he hated, or complying with the white man’s way and being like everyone else in the tribe(Criswell). Unlike the others, Okonkwo would not back down, and that is why he is a hero. The Igbo culture was slowly being destroyed by the