Okonkwo's Response To Cultural Collisions

Upon an initial reading of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, it is easy to blame the demise of Okonkwo’s life and of the Umofia community on the imperialistic invasions of the white men. After all, Okonkwo seemed to be enjoying relative peace and happiness before then. He did have a few mishaps; one of them resulted in him being exiled for eight years. Nonetheless, he returned to his home town with high spirits and with prospects of increased success. However, everything has changed. The white men have brought with them a new religion and a new government. Okonkwo’s family falls apart. The men in his village lose their courage and valor; they do not offer any resistance to the white men. Consequently, Okonkwo kills

Okonkwo continually rejected the ways of his father, who was deeply indebted to other members of Umuofia, holding no titles, to the point where Okonkwo’s “whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness” (16). He transferred his fears into the context of Umuofia and the traits that society valued, but what was really the driving force in his decisions “was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father” (17). The values of Umuofia resembled the polar opposite of what Unoka was and Okonkwo twisted his motivations around in his mind and presented them to himself and the community as derived from Umuofia’s traditions. From this delusion, Okonkwo established his ultimate goal of becoming a revered member of the village, possessing many titles, and achieving anything necessary displaying his prominence in the community.

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

Prior to the colonization, Okonkwo sat near the top of the clan’s social ladder. Okonkwo worked for his titles by motivating himself to never be the person his father was. As a result of his hard work, Okonkwo earned a spot as part of the egwugwu. Achebe hinted at this during the egwugwu trial by saying: “Okonkwo’s wives, and perhaps other women as well, might have noticed that the second egwugwu had the springy walk of Okonkwo. And they might have noticed that Okonkwo was not among the titled men and elders who sat behind the row of egwugwu” (89-90). The quote implied that Okonkwo was part of the egwugwu. In the Igbo tribe, being an egwugwu was a high honor. The circumstance under which Okonkwo was appointed to become an egwugwu proves that he was a man of high status among his tribe. Okonkwo

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 initially introduced as a proud, hardworking, successful warrior. He is described as "clearly cut out for great things" (6). But he is the son of a ne'er-do-well father; though genial and inoffensive, Unoka must certainly have been considered a failure. He is lazy and does not provide for his family. Not only is this disgraceful, but life-threatening as well. He is dependent on other members of the clan and must have been considered unsuccessful. Okonkwo chafes under such disgrace and his success is a consequence of his desire to be everything his father is not; society's vision of an exemplar citizen. The fact that Okonkwo is able to rise above his poverty and disgraceful paternity illustrates the Igbo's acceptance of individual free will. But Okonkwo's fate and his disharmony with his chi, family and clan are shown to cause his ultimate disgrace and death.

The missionaries conflict with everything Okonkwo believes or values. The missionaries are so outlandish to Okonkwo that his first reaction is just to laugh at them. This is shown on page 147, paragraph 4, “ At the end of it Okonkwo was fully convinced that the man was mad. He shrugged his shoulders and went away.” Okonkwo later begins to understand the threat the missionaries pose to his society and passionately speaks for forcing the missionaries out of Umuofia. However when his people will not listen to him, he feels like he is forced to take matters into his own hands. This is shown on page 204, paragraph 7,” Okonkwo’s machete descended twice and the man’s head lay beside his uniformed body”. The Ibo people do not join in on the violence as Okonkwo had hoped, which contradicted with Okonkwo belief that the Ibo were warrior people. This final loss of Okonkwo’s core beliefs is what shatters Okonkwo’s final sense of identity as a man. As Okonkwo is no longer any of the things he has come to identify himself as, and Okonkwo blames the missionaries for this, his final response to the missionaries is to take his own life. Okonkwo's death is shown on page 207, paragraph 3 “ Then they came to the tree from which Okonkwo’s body was dangling, and they stopped dead.” When Okonkwo identity was ripped from him he no longer saw a point in living and his fight with the

In this embedded assessment I chose Okonkwo to display how reacted to the westerns culture and how it impacted him. Okonkwo didn’t really take the cultural collision to well as it was the reason it ruined his life. Okonkwo was probably the one that had the greatest hatred toward the westerners and their culture. Not only did he have his family torn apart but got tortured as well. When he was close to achieving happiness a bit after returning to his village when the 7 year exile was up everything started to fall apart.

Strong, influential, and driven to succeed, Okonkwo does not let the invasion of missionaries into his clan deter him and his love of Umuofia. Determined not to be effeminate like his lazy father, he kills himself in order to avoid the misery and changes of the white men. While this action may seem rash, irrational, and similar to giving up, the resulting consequences prove otherwise. With the Ibo culture coming near to an end, Okonkwo’s death is symbolic of Umuofia giving in and of what their culture used to be. He settles all the messy affairs, saving everyone the time of a trial with an already known outcome. On top of that, he gives one last call to remember the culture Umuofia is on the path to forgetting. On page 24, Unoka tells Okonkwo

The fact that these missionaries have started to really make an impact was unprecedented by the Ibo people; their continuous misunderstandings of one another contribute to make this situation frustrating to both the Ibo clansmen and the Christians that view their religion as superior. Okonkwo returns back to his home village of Umuofia after his exile to Mbanta, and he arrives to see missionaries have overtaken the village, created a government, and many Umuofians have joined the church. As Okonkwo and his friend Obierika are talking, Obierika says of the missionaries and their impact, “He says that our customs are bad; and our own brothers who have taken up his religion also say that our customs are bad. How do you think we can fight when our own brothers have turned against us?...He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart” (176). The white men and missionaries have been successful in coming in and gaining power. They believe the customs to be “bad”, showing their disregard of Ibo culture, and how their motives for infiltrating Ibo life is based off of selfish ideas- only to gain more followers to their religion. Furthermore, by actually being successful in drawing Umuofians into their religion, they have turned

For instance, Okonkwo deters the collision of culture as a response to the European colonialism. He endlessly strives to fight the changes following from the white missionary's arrival within the Igbo society. He objects the European views and believes the Igbo people should unite to extradite the western people forcefully. The cultural collision challenged Okonkwo’s identity by changing the way his people view him. Considering before the missionary came in “Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond. His fame rested on solid personal achievements” (Achebe 1). He is admired, feared, and greatly honored for his abilities and diligent. Although now that the white missionary took control of the villages and take away everything

When the new religion is brought over by the white men, Okonkwo strongly opposes to it because he felt that its qualities display weakness and would destroy the Ibo culture. He refused to change and stuck to his old ways, but as more and more of his clansmen convert, Okonkwo sees his world start to crumble. “Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer stand as one” (Achebe 176). His clan slowly divides into two clear-cut sides, but the Ibo people didn’t want to fight back the new religion. As a result, Christianity took over everything, from the government, to the judicial system. Feeling powerless, Okonkwo commits his final act of vengeance and kills a messenger, committing suicide soon after. If the Umoufia had tried to fight back Christianity, they wouldn’t have loss so much power this quickly. This reluctance was due to the absence of

Okonkwo's father, Unoka, was "a failure," "a loafer," and "People laughed at him" (1426). This would bring great shame to any man as it did for Okonkwo. In Umuofia "a man is judged according to his worth and not according to the worth of his father" (1427). In Umuofia "achievement was revered." Okonkwo became obsessed with the need to prove to everyone that he, unlike his father, was a man

Due to Okonkwo’s banishment, he must face his departure to his mother’s homeland, Mbanta. Not everything will be as it was in this new settlement, though. In Umuofia, Okonkwo had more freedom to do as he wanted. He could discipline his family, rule over others, and he was respected as a person of his civilization. However, in Mbanta, Uchendu, his mother’s younger brother, has even told of Okonkwo that he stand up and he will do what he sees as fair and righteous in Mbanta, not as what Okonkwo perceives is justified. Uchendu stands up for himself by stating, “‘I know more about the world than any of you. If there is any one among you who thinks he knows more let him speak up.’ He paused, but no one spoke.” (Achebe, 133). Okonkwo will have internal conflicts and maybe even external conflicts with him due to Uchendu’s superior behavior towards the other people. Things are also different than they were in Umuofia because now Okonkwo has to look to a paternal figurehead, A.k.a. Uchendu. Now that Okonkwo has miniscule control, he won’t have the same amount of privileges nor the same amount of influence towards other people. Uchendu also states his authority over the other “civilians” by informing, “‘I am an old man and you are all children.’” (133). Okonkwo’s true struggle will be with himself after his actions with the ceremonial man. He will beat himself up for committing murder and he may even feel like he is being punished by his Gods. Nevertheless, Okonkwo might have an

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