Okonkwo

Okonkwo and Walter may or may not have achieved it, but while their eyes are fixated on their end goals for success and what they are gaining, they overlook their losses. Because of Okonkwo’s fear of being regarded weak, he often acts overly aggressive to demonstrate his masculinity. Examples of his acting aggressive and cruel fills the entire novel. The first incident is his beating of his wife Ojiugo during the week of peace. No violence is permitted during this week, but Okonkwo breaks the laws only to establish his dominance in the house. Afterall, he cannot be “like the man in the song who had ten and one wives and not enough soup for his foo-foo” (Achebe 57). This incident is an indication of Okonkwo’s disregard for tribal laws because of how less they weigh than his masculinity does in his heart. After already losing respect for the Igbo cultures and customs, Okonkwo continues on losing a dear son. Ikemefuna is captured from

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

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's fear of being perceived as weak tragically leads to him to be unnecessarily violent and excessively prideful. These two fatal flaws lead to Okonkwo’s own emotional isolation, and his inevitable downfall. Driven by the fear of being seen as weak and emasculated, Okonkwo exhibits hyper masculinity and rage. Although this behavior initially leads to success in the patriarchal society of Umofia, rage is his greatest bane: it masks his compassion and pusillanimity. Onkonkwo’s obsession to never appear feminine is driven to the extreme. He denies affection even to his own family, “never show[ing] any emotion openly, unless it be the emotion of anger. To [Okonkwo] show[ing] affection was a sign of weakness; the only thing worth demonstrating was strength.” (pg. 28). Okonkwo whose “whole life [is] dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness.” (pg. 13) suppress his compassion in order to appear important and manly. Ironically this creates a stark juxtaposition between his own fear and his position as an alpha male. Rather than being masculine and courageous, Okonkwo just creates tension within his family and within himself. The pinnacle of this extreme hypermasculinity is when Okonkwo ignores the wisdom of the elder Ezeudu, and violently kills his “son” Ikamafuna: “As the man who had cleared his throat drew up and raised his machete, Okonkwo looked away. He had heard Ikamafuna cry “My father, they have killed me!”

Okonkwo’s fear of unmanliness is kindled by his father, who was a lazy, unaccomplished man. Okonkwo strives to have a high status from a young age and eventually achieves it. He has a large family, many yams and is well known throughout the village for his valor. He

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 is portrayed as a respected individual in many ways. He was a well known person through out the 9 villages and beyond. His successes were based wholly on his personal achievements. For example, he was a warrior and wrestler who gained respect through his athletics. Manliness was a

Okonkwo thinks he is the owner of his household and he shows no mercy to anyone who angers him. “He ruled his household with a heavy hand. His wives…lived in perpetual fear of his fiery temper, and so did his little children. 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.” (Achebe, Chapter 2, p.8). Okonkwo beats his children and wives because of his temper which is influenced by the Igbo society; he puts on a hard exterior because he is afraid of being weak and unsuccessful. At one point, he attempts to kill his second wife with a gun because he thinks she is the cause of a tree’s death. In order to prove his power and strength, without thinking of the consequences, Okonkwo beats his youngest wife during the week of peace - a week when the village celebrates peace and who ever disrupts the peace will be punished by Ala, the earth goddess (Lycos, online). “His first two wives ran out in great alarm pleading with him that it was the sacred week. But Okonkwo was not the man to stop beating somebody half-way through, not even for the fear of a goddess.” (Achebe, Chapter 4, p.21). Okonkwo lives in a male dominant society where men are pressured to be strong and successful; because of these influences, Okonkwo develops an inner

Okonkwo has a tragic flaw, dark downfall, but does not recognize his flaw as the cause of his downfall. This conveys the theme that one’s insecurity will lead to their demise, regardless of their intent. First, Okonkwo’s flaw is his insecurity rooted in his need for masculinity. Okonkwo fears the idea that “he should be found to resemble his father” and was a “man of action, a man of war. Unlike his father he could stand the look of blood” (13, 10). Given how Okonkwo’s father was a man of no wealth or status, he was seen as feminine. Refusing to resemble his father, Okonkwo becomes a strong, masculine man. Additionally, Okonkwo’s downfall was the result of multiple events that threaten his masculinity. Okonkwo’s first major offense was killing Ikemefuna out of fear of weakness despite being told to “not bear a hand in his death” (57). Additionally, the crime that forced Okonkwo into exile is when his “gun had exploded and a piece of iron had pierced the boy’s heart” (124). Furthermore, Okonkwo’s need for power causes him to kill a messenger as his “machete descended twice and the man’s head lay beside his uniformed body” (204). As a result of his need to appear masculine, Okonkwo makes one foolish decision after another that culminate to his downfall. His refusal to not kill Ikemefuna was done out of fear of seeming weak, his crime that sent him to exile was deemed

In conclusion, Okonkwo exemplifies Aristotle's definition of a tragic hero. His character has many tragic flaws, including, fear of weakness, hubris, and his work ethic, which in the end lead to his death. His life and death provoke pity and fear for the audience. Okonkwo becomes noble and is a great leader overall in the story. In the end, Chinua Achebe has shown an expressive character that evidently can be called a tragic

Normally, a successful hero arises from a rough past. However, Chinua Achebe wrote a story that contrasts with the usual pattern of a hero’s life. The novel Things Fall Apart centers on a man named Okonkwo, a clan leader in the village of Umuofia. From Okonkwo’s tragic hero qualities and struggle with his son and culture, readers can learn several qualities to consider and to avoid. A tragic hero is defined as a person who experiences a disastrous fall after accumulating high titles.

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.

In Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, the main character, Okonkwo, serves as a tragic hero. A tragic hero, as defined by Aristotle, is a great character who makes a judgement error that inevitably leads to his or her’s own downfall. By the end of the novel, Okonkwo’s downfall can be seen when he ends up taking his own life. On one hand, some may argue that Okonkwo was merely a victim of fate. On the other hand, others may also argue that Okonkwo was responsible for his own downfall. I believe that Okonkwo, like all tragic heroes, was ultimately responsible for his own death.

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

In his poetic, a tragic hero cannot be an eminently good man. The suffering of such a man will be shocking. The tragic hero neither can be a bad man nor a villain. According to Aristotle, “The tragic hero is a man who is not eminently good and just, yet whose misfortune is bought about not by voice, but by the some error of judgement” (Aristotle, 1978). The misfortune of such a man will lead to downfall. In Things fall Apart, the main protagonist Okonkwo is considered as tragic hero and he has the all the noble characters. Oknokwo was very successful and renowned in his community. He was the leader of Ibo society and he was also a famous wrestler and successful farmer. With these characters of successful in many ways, he was very wealthy man, hold a high position in the community, he had three wives, and is also best wrestler and worrier. He also rules his family with