The Fearless Man In Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness.” Many people believed that Okonkwo was such a cruel man because of the wall that he put up. This affected his family because he still continued to act tough with his wives and most of his kids, there was only one of his children that saw his soft side and that was Emzina, his daughter. He also thought a lot about one of the people he killed, which showed that he wasn’t the tough guy that everybody thought he was, but no matter what he refused to show any signs of weakness to avoid being like his

The book states, “He had a slight stammer and whenever he was angry and could not get his words out fast enough, he would use his fists,” (4). He is an impatient man who tends to use his brute strength to intimidate and prove his point. In another example when Okonkwo is beating his wife, Ojiugo, “. . . he had forgotten it was the Week of Peace . . . But Okonkwo was not the man to stop beating somebody half-way through. . .” (26). His emotions rule him, rather than his head. Okonkwo awards few glimpses of passionate emotion apart from anger or bloodlust. His household is one ruled by fear of his outbursts, the brunt of which his wives typically bear.

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

“…His [Okonkwo’s] whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness…It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father” (13).

An archetype in literature expresses “a realm of human experience in many myths and fantasy stories” that can go deeper than “any rational or intellectual thinking” (Gillespie). The archetype of the monomyth, or “The Hero’s Journey” first originated from a mythological researcher named Joseph Campbell. The monomyth consists of “several basic stages that almost every hero-quest goes through, no matter what culture the myth is a part of” (Hamby). The Hero’s journey is vaguely apparent in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, which depicts the African clan leader, Okonkwo, as the archetypal hero. Achebe reveals throughout the novel that Okonkwo’s ability to

Okonkwo strives all of his life to become a stronger, more powerful, and a successful individual. He wants to do this because his father was a slack and lazy person who lived most of his life in debt and had no titles to his name. People often looked at his father as a women figure for the few achievements he redeemed. Okonkwo never wanted to be like his father and it eventually got to the point where he became fearful of becoming like him. Achebe uses the power of fear as a theme of to show how much it can devastate one’s

Unlike his father he could stand the look of blood.” (10). He was also described as “a man of war.” Not being afraid of war or the look of blood shows that Okonkwo is brave.

He was afraid of being thought weak” (Achebe 61). When we see that Okonkwo chooses to go through with these actions, we quickly see what we once thought was an epic hero on the rise quickly begin to

In the book, Okonkwo was the tribe leader in Umuofia and wants to carry on the traditions that have been in his tribe for years. While he is known as being a leader, the character struggles daily with not wanting to be like his father who is lazy, and weak. Therefore he avoids everything possible to not be like him. Which leads into more of a bigger issue that is not being weak in front of anyone.

His status and behavior in Umuofia made many people uncertain of his action, especially in the start. In early chapters, it mentioned Okonkwos disliking to weakness comes form his father. He wants to come off as strong, and that caused him to live with a violent nature, “He had a slight stammer and whenever he was angry and could not get his words out quickly enough, he would use his fist” (4).This quote shows how Okonkwo is harsh and is not patient enough to wait for any explanations. His violent ways causes others in the village to dislike his ways and believes he deserves what is coming to

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." (H. P. Lovecraft) In Chinua Achebe's novel "Things Fall Apart" the theme of fear is constant and persistent. It is shown through a great and respected warrior named Okonkwo. While he is wealthy, with many wives, and some high titles within his clan he is still plagued with his fear. He fears the unknown,

He has always wanted to look total opposite of his father, who was a weaker, more peaceful type of man. Okonkwo tries to steer away from this style of life as much as he can, and is afraid to live like his father, because his father wasn't a strong warrior like him. The first piece of evidence I have that shows how fear really does control this whole novel is on page 13. This quote literally says what my point is. " Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man.

Okonkwo thought of himself as a strong and fierce man that could do whatever he set his mind to… that was before his 7 year exile. During his 7 year stay in Mbanta Okonkwo immediately didn’t like them and wanted to rid

A normal person would try to change and adapt to conformity, but as he always did Okonkwo turned his fear into violence. Okonkwo has social intelligence, he knew what people thought of him was important. Unfortunately, Okonkwo cared way too much about what people thought of him. He was scared that others would see him as weak. He wants to be seen as a strong, successful man, anything else is not good enough.

In the book Things Fall Apart. Chinua Achebe shows that through most of the part he shows that Okonkwo does not want to be anything like his father is . Okonkwo struggles with fear,showing weakness but that won’t stop him from being the brave person that he is . Okonkwo shows this through his actions and thoughts that everyone has a weakness to fear .