Things Fall Apart Quote Analysis

Throughout Chinua Achebe’s novel, Things Fall Apart, it is made very apparent how much the main character, Okonkwo, values manliness. Despite the fact that Okonkwo lived quite a few centuries ago, his story still shares some similarities with the way men today are pressured to be masculine. Okonkwo’s desire to be masculine affects him by causing him to be violent towards his family, view women as lesser than him, and produce a view that men shouldn’t have emotions. In the end, this desire causes his downfall, eventually causing him to take his own life.

Status. Social hierarchy. Importance in the world. These three words all mean the same thing, in their own respective ways. Whether it be the number of yams in one’s barn, or the number of Ferraris in their garage, they are both indicative of how successful one is.

The Fall of Pride Pride leads to one’s demise. As it led Okonkwo to his demise in Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart, his pride and ignorance retain those around him from progress, Okonkwo’s community and family fall apart because of his pride that lead him to take his own life. The quote “The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance.” and Achebe’s Things Fall Apart both present the idea that pride impedes progress.

“He [Okonkwo] had a slight stammer when he was angry and whenever he was angry and could not get his words out quickly enough, he would use his fists” (Achebe 3) This quote from Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe shows that Okonkwo is strong, but also haf flaws. Although Okonkwo has many strengths, he is quick to anger and displays his anger in violence. Okonkwo shows his strength in his success, and his manliness. Okonkwo has a lot of money: “...he was not a failure like Unoka.

It is intriguing to the reader to try and place Okonkwo in a type of “evil” or “good,” although it is not at all an easy task. The fact that Okonkwo is so vague in his motivation makes him ambiguous to his readers. His low self of steam, is his fear of failure and his weakness. He is a man dominated by anger that struggles with his emotions, and works to resist his basic human need for his sadness expression. His characteristics are powerfully human, and because they are so believable, he is exceptionally identifiable to the reader.

Things Fall Apart Major Essay “Never good enough… Never perfect enough… Never powerful enough… Never successful enough…” (Brown 25). The fear of never being good enough, also known as scarcity, exists in every human being in the world. Everyone is terrified of feeling inferior to the people around them.

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.

Pema Chodron once stated, “Nothing ever goes away until it teaches us what we need to know.” This quote can be related to novel written by Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart since the protagonist Okonkwo didn’t hang himself and take his own life until he was able to gain his respect and reputation. He has proved that even when his family’s past generations didn’t leave anything for him, Okonkwo gained his own two titles with a great reputation. The title of the novel is significant since certain events in the book take place which allow things to fall apart in the novel. For example, Okonkwo taking a hand in the killing of Ikemefuna has caused Nwoye to convert to Christianity.

Dominance: When Things Fall Apart You have to be a dead-eyed dirty-souled maniac to want to spend your extended life trading punches with other maniacs. Once you've seized that power, there's no getting off the merry-go-round. You fight like hell just to hold on or you get shoved off.

In fact, he started off as a poor man, drowning in his father’s debt. Furthermore, he inherits his father’s reputation as a lazy man. Therefore, Okonkwo is driven by his father's legacy of shame and has no use for unsuccessful men. One finds that "His whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and weakness." (13), and that the roots of the fear go deep.

In Okonkwo’s case in Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, tradition and legacy constrict his mind to make choices that would give him titles and honor. His status is above all the most important thing to him, because of his obsessive need to be nothing like his father. It was not just an obsessive need but a full-blown fear that he would slightly resemble his father’s carefree lifestyle and be deemed as weak and feminine. “Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness. It was deeper and more intimate than the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw. Okonkwo’s fear was greater than these. It was not external, but lay deep within himself. It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father” (Achebe, 13). This rigidity that he possesses leads him to make rash and vile decisions, for example, his participation in the death of Ikemefuma. This incident indicates the beginning in the end, it “initiates a series of catastrophes which end with his death” (Carroll, 44). The world around Okonkwo was changing rapidly, and everything he had worked for, and killed for became too much, for he could not adapt to his environment. Okonkwo’s inability to refine his life to the world, and process his fears results in his suicide at the

In Things Fall Apart okonkwo prefers pride over anything in his life he does anything too be strong. He ruled over anyone over a heavy hand too prove a point too himself. He also never shows emotions toward anyone because he thinks it will make him weak. But his pride can always lead too something bad if used the wrong way.

In the novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, things fall apart for the character Okonkwo because of his character traits. Okonkwo is a very structured man with little patience for whatever he believes is wrong. Some of Okonkwos negative character traits include his violent temper, which gets him in trouble with his religion, clan, family and the missionaries, and his constant battles with his own father which cause him to believe in what is wrong, even if he is aware of what is right. As well, Okonkwo being such a structured man is a good feature of his personal nature, but even this has a negative effect on his life. Okonkwo is an extremely complex character created by Chinua Achebe, and his life falls apart because of all of these

“…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).

Okonkwo fits the mold of a tragic hero, a character who experiences an inner struggle because of some character flaw. The struggle ends in the hero’s defeat. Okonkwos’ inner struggle was his complete fear of being unsuccessful or being like his father who was “agbala “. Agbala was the name they called a man who was feminine. This was an extreme insult. He had an extreme fear of showing weakness or femininity. All of his actions were driven by this strong fear. This fear was present when he almost shot Ekwefi and beat her and when he aided in the death of Ikemefuna. Okonkwos’ flaw would have to be undeniably his complete blindness and his pride. Okonkwo refused to ever be told he is wrong or is anything less than perfect. Okonkwos struggle ended at the tree behind the bush in his compound. “…The tragic feeling is evoked in us when we are in the presence of a character who is ready to lay down his life if need be to secure one thing- his sense of personal dignity”. - Arthur Miller