Okonkwo's Anger In Things Fall Apart By Chinua Achebe

In the beginning of the book Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, we are introduced to Okonkwo, the protagonist of the story. Throughout the world there are many novels where the protagonist is a hero, the person who fixes the problem. Okonkwo, however, is not this type of character. He is not perfect and does not fix the problem, he gets angry at it. Many people believe he is an overall good man. On the other hand I believe Okonkwo is deeply flawed because of his anger and abuse to his family.

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 is a rude, unforgivable and spiteful person. He beats his wives and even takes innocent girls and boys away from enemy tribes. In some way he may even resemble his father, Unoka. He was lazy and very much in debt. If Okonkwo continues what he does he will become him. Although Ekwefi and Ojiugo are both wives, they get beat for different reasons.

“When he walked, his heels hardly touched the ground and he seemed to walk on springs, as if he was going to pounce on somebody. And he did pounce on people quite often. He had a slight stammer and whenever he was angry and could not get his words out quickly enough, he would use his fists.”(p. 1-2). It is clear that Okonkwo has anger issues and can be very violent, but where does all of this anger instead of him come from? It comes from childhood, him watching his father constantly struggle, borrow things that he knew he could not give back, and constantly being a failure. Okonkwo knew that this was the kind of man he would refuse to be, therefor, he worked extremely hard for what he had gained in his lifetime. Okonkwo grew up to make a name

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

     Just as Okonkwo did not want to be like his father, Nwoye did not want to be like Okonkwo. Nwoye possessed traits that Okonkwo did not such as gentleness, forgiveness, and acceptance. Okonkwo saw these as signs of weakness. "Okonkwo never showed any emotion openly, unless it be the emotion of anger. To show affection was a sign of weakness; the only thing worth demonstrating was strength" (Achebe 28). Okonkwo considered Nwoye to be lazy and wanted him to be a success like himself. "Okonkwo wanted his son to be a great farmer and a great man. . . . I will not have a son who cannot hold up his head in the gathering of the clan. I would sooner strangle him with my own hands" (Achebe 33). This is an example of the difference in personal beliefs among family.

This is an example of the difference in personal beliefs among family. Some may say that the book is about the differences in beliefs between the Africans and the colonizers, but it is more than that. It is clear that it was Okonkwo's personal beliefs and not necessarily the views of the people of Umuofia which guided him in what he did. One of these is his reliance in the strength of anger. Although he felt strongly in the beliefs and customs of the Ibo people, there are several occasions in which Okonkwo made a decision to disobey the customs in order to live out his own personal beliefs. For example, in chapter four, Okonkwo is yelled at by Ezeani, the priest of the earth goddess, for beating his wife during the sacred week of peace. Okonkwo did not feel remorse for his actions and probably thought of it as a sign of strength and manhood. Okonkwo was always worried about being seen as weak. One good

Even though it is literally stated that Okonkwo is not one to show his emotions nor talk very much, he has deeper thoughts and feelings. There were numerous occasions when his children were put in danger and he was too worried for them. I also strongly believe he would defend his wives if ever the need arose. It is also written, however, that he almost always loses his temper on his family, and beats them occasionally. It is also because of this temper that he beat one of his wives on the Week Of Peace, almost shot another, and practically strangled his eldest son. But do not entirely blame him. His temper is his temper, and even though he learns how to control it, it is still always there, a part of him. As of the beating, he is not the only one that practices it. It is in their culture for the husband to beat his family when he feels it is necessary. His people believe it is a form of

“Unoka, the grown-up, was a failure” (Achebe 4). As Okonkwo grows up, he realized his biggest fear and fatal flaw is the fact that he desperately did not want to end up like his father, disrespected and very emotional. Therefore, Okonkwo fears weakness and open shows of emotions, so he contains himself and only shows anger, as he associates it with manliness. He is so scared of becoming his father and changing his ways that he resorts to beating people to show his dominance. “And when she returned he beat her very heavily” (Achebe 19). In this quote, Okonkwo beats his youngest wife, Ojiugo, for not returning soon enough to cook the afternoon meal. Since he decided to act without thought, he beat his wife in the Week of Peace, where no one is to be harmed. This causes a great unrest between Okonkwo and his chi, or his inner spirit, and gradually leads to his downfall of luck and

First, Okonkwo is a controlling gentlemen. He wants to be nothing like his father, him and his father are very different. During the week of peace Okonkwo beats his wife. He beats his wife up because she was braiding her hair instead of

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 sees women as weak and dependant on men. He believes that having sympathy and any other emotion besides anger is effeminating. Okonkwo frequently uses “woman” as an insult. When contradicted at one of the village meetings by another man he says, “This meeting is for men.” (4.1) Okonkwo believes calling a man a women will “kill a man’s spirit.” (4.1) It is easy to see that Okonkwo’s harsh reaction shows he has insecurity. He sees letting himself be contradicted as feminine and verbally strikes back in order to dispel any doubts about Okonkwo’s masculinity. This scene is near the beginning of the novel, thus there is little to show how significant this foreshadowing is to explaining Okonkwo’s character.

Okonkwo’s demise In Things Fall Apart Okonkwo’s anger led to his demise. In the book Okonkwo’s anger, let him beat his wife, when Okonkwo was in a rage he just want to hurt and killed people, his friends always want to stop him, his anger also let him to kill the messenger. The anger always lets him to doing wrong thing over and over again.

Okonkwo was known for his valor in war and his victory against Amalinze the Cat, Okonkwo believed that masculinity can only be shown through his violent action, in order to express his power, he often hit his wives and children, even during the Week of Peace. Nothing seemed to be able to stop him from being violent, because nice or caring personality is considered as weak or feminine. First case was when Ojiugo left without feeding her kid, and such action to Okonkwo was Ojiugo not doing her duty as stated “‘Did she ask you to feed then before she went?’ ‘Yes,’ lied Nwoye’s mother, trying to minimize Ojiugo’s thoughtlessness. Okonkwo knew she was not speaking the truth. He walked back to his obi to await Ojiugo’s return. And when she returned he beat her very heavily. In his anger he had forgotten that it was the Week of Peace” (Achebe 29). The word “beat heavily” implies that Okonkwo did not just beat Ojiugo, instead, it is in the form of domestic violence, the

Okonkwo, as presented by Chinua Achebe in the novel Things Fall Apart, wished to be revered by all as a man of great wealth, power and control--the antithesis of his father. Okonkwo was driven by the need to exhibit utmost control over himself and others; he was an obsessive and insecure man.