Things Fall Apart Okonkwo Flaws

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

His third wife, Ojiugo went out one night and forgot to bring Okonkwo his dinner, this frustrated him. “He walked back to his obi to await Ojiugo return. And when she returned he beat her very heavily” (26). The quote shows how he would beat his wives even over something like dinner. Throughout the rest of the novel he would continue to beat his wives, and even abandon his child. Nwoye was this child, who he later disowned. “Okonkwo did not answer. But he left hold of Nwoye, who walked away and never returned” (127). He was displeased that his son was with the Christians and disobeyed him. Okonkwo despised the Europeans, enough to deny his oldest son, which is the most important child. Okonkwo regularly abused and rejected family which shows how flawed he is.

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.

In the novel Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo is portrayed as a respected and determined individual whose fatal flaw eventually works against him. Throughout the novel the readers are shown that Okonkwo has many of these Characteristics because he is obsessed with the idea of becoming just like his father. This becomes his flaw in the novel that puts him into exile and makes it hard for him to adjust to the changes that were made with in his village.

The breakdown of Okonkwo’s relationship with his son is evident throughout this novel. The reason for this tumultuous relationship is, Okonkwo is too engrossed in maintaining his status quo, and his relationship was governed by his own beliefs, principles and his own “right way to do right things”. He treated his family very strictly as he believed that showing affection revealed a sign of social weakness; thus the disheartening lack of respect and love was a mal nourishing factor with in the family.

Things Fall Apart tells the story of Okonkwo, a tribal African yam farmer, through trials and tribulations that change both him and his tribe. The Umuofia clan values traits such as strength, confidence, crop success, and honor. Okonkwo exemplifies everything that the clan wants in a man, and he was well aware of it. He thrives on being the antithesis of the image of his father, Unoka, who was viewed as considerably more feminine and generally a failure because of his failed harvests and love of the flute. Nwoye, Okonkwo’s son, is also considerably more feminine, and therefore lesser, in the eyes of his father. Okonkwo compensated for the failure in his blood line by putting on a front of hyper-masculine fervor; something that leads him down many troublesome roads. While Things Fall Apart is a tale of many things, Okonkwo’s struggle with femininity causes many of the major conflicts the story. Okonkwo’s learned opposition to feminine traits causes him to project machismo in order to cover up for the underlying feminine qualities that he has and is fearful 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

As we seen the character development in Okonkwo, we begin to see his true colors shine through when he lets his rough exterior down to take in a new child that came into the village. With this slight glimmer of hope, we see that he takes the child in as one of his own, and we suddenly see things make a turn for the worse when one of the village men inform him that the child must die. For example in the text it states, “‘My father, they have killed me!’ as he ran towards him. Dazed with fear, Okonkwo drew his machete and cut him down.

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.

From Progression to Failure Western ideas changed the perspectives of many people in Africa, but in the book Things Fall Apart it grasps an image of how their identities are altered. Robust, sedulous, and stern was the definition of Okonkwo a man who strived to become the strongest and highest man of his clan. Okonkwo had many setbacks, but always kept pushing forward even when he had to reinstate his life all over again to become the strongest again. But when the Western ideas had arrived in Africa he had slowly fallen succumbed to it and had perished. Yet those ideas had left a mark in his life, even though he had rebuked them, Okonkwo had diminished from taking any action in those ideas, but he had ended his life because of it.

From the beginning of the novel, Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo changes from being confident to being a hopeless man. After he shoots a boy he is banished to his mother’s homeland for seven years. After that happened he returns to his village and everything has changed, even the culture, he had to change in order for him to fit in the new society. Okonkwo is a hard worker and respected.

Okonkwo is a man who has to have things his own way. In the novel, there is a scene where his second wife, Ojiugo, did not make him his afternoon meal. Okonkwo, in an act of anger, started to beat his wife heaviley. His other two wives begged for him to stop beating Ojiugo, as it was the Week of Peace, a sacred Igbo holiday. However, “...Okonkwo was not the man to stop beating somebody half-way through, not even for fear of a goddess” (Achebe 30). Despite believing that he may be punished by a god, Okonkwo did not stop beating his wife. Unoka was a more compassionate man than Okonkwo, he was also stubborn. Unoka was lazy and fiscally irresponsible. He spent what little money he had on alcohol and didn’t

In the novel, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, we see a character who’s name is Okonkwo and his relationships with his family. He has different and similar relationships when it comes to his second wife and first son. Both characters are treated in way that makes Okonkwo an unsympathetic character. Ekwefi, his wife, and Nwoye, eldest son, are two different people who both suffer because of how Okonkwo treats them.

In the novel Things Fall Apart, author Chinua Achebe introduces a character by the name of Okonkwo. Okonkwo is a hard-working man, with three wives, and eight children. Okonkwo grew up poor with a lazy, unsuccessful father who was indebted to many people and had little to no control over his life. Because Okonkwo did not inherit any barns or wives from his father, he started from scratch and took it upon himself to work twice as hard as many other men of the Ibo culture. His father’s lack of success was his fuel to be great and achieve many things.

In this novel Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe, there are many symbolic meanings that are taking place in this novel. One of those things is that Okonkwo death is symbolic of the death of the whole culture or was it an individual’s refusal to change for society. My opinion is that it is a symbol of the death of the whole culture. My reason are because he refuse to change like everyone else around him, he doesn’t like the change and tries to stay strong for his culture and he killed himself because he couldn’t stop the change from everyone .