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Okonkwo's Failure

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In Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo shows an extreme amount of obsession with the idea of success that he did not have an alternative to failure. Men take important roles in their community gained through hard work and dedication. All men start off at the same ranking level and slowly rank up based on their strength and wealth, which someone could inherit through family members. This ranking and wealth shape a man's entire life. Like many other objects of value if you lose part or all of your land your ranking in the society will begin to fall and everything you worked hard to achieve will no longer exist.
Okonkwo’s life had a rough start in relativity to the amount of success his father had. His dad, having qualities of a lazy man, shaped his entire life. Since Okonkwo “had no patience with his father” (Achebe 4) and absolutely despised the way he acted and the way he had raised him, he learned what it felt to have worthless and lazy traits. Okonkwo knew that this setting was not an appropriate setting for a man to grow up in and wanted to change this to allow him to have a successful life and successful children. He used this to redirect his life in order to give him a better more developed lifestyle.
With the past that Okonkwo had, he immediately began to …show more content…

Okonkwo loved Ikemefuna and treated him well. He was proud that he had finally got himself a strong man as his son. Although Okonkwo treated Ikemefuna just like a son Okonkwo’s success has more importance and nothing would stop Okonkwo from having a high rank in the clan. The day came when the clan decided to kill Ikemefuna, and even though Okonkwo treated him as a son, Okonkwo “was afraid of being thought of as weak.”(Achebe 61) causing Okonkwo to draw “his machete and cut him down.” (Achebe 61). Because he could not be looked at as weak, he chooses to take part in the killing of

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