Who Is Responsible For Okonkwo's Death In Things Fall Apart

Okonkwo soon learns about this and confronts his son, Nwoye about his secret meetings, Okonkwo soon becomes enraged and disowns his son after hearing about his experience not before abusing him of course. This action causes an effect which ultimately leads to Okonkwo’s downfall. Okonkwo enraged by the spread of Christianity within his own village self-proclaims war on the “white man”. Okonkwo eventually was detained as a result of his actions towards the “white man”. After he was released from detainment Okonkwo killed a courier and began to truly understand he was a rebel without a cause as his fellow Tribesmen would not help him with his internal struggle. Okonkwo knowing, he would be caught and executed for his crimes, instead decided to ultimately end his own life by hanging himself. Okonkwo’s major downfall in the story was his inability to co-exist with the white man and began his own personal vendetta against the Christian missionaries. Throughout the story the main essential theme Achebe tried to relay to us would be the fact that even though individuals may be of different religions, skin color, and have different personalities there is a realization that

In the first part of the book, Okonkwo is a great, successful, and strong man of title and fame. He is a stark contrast from his father, who is lazy and weak (2, 10). Okonkwo fears “failure [and] weakness”, which fuels his desire and strive to be strong and manly (10). In addition, the Ibo admire manliness and strength, which inflates Okonkwo’s hubris. In his attempts to maintain his image of power, he allows his ego and pride to take over his judgment. For example, when Ikemefuna cries to Okonkwo to save him, he is in a “daz[e]” of fear, he makes the horrible decision of killing Ikemefuna (53). This is the big mistake that is his reversal of fortune, or peripeteia. After the death of Ikemefuna, Okonkwo is met with great misfortune. He faces depression and exile for 7 years when he accidentally kills Ezeudu’s son (109). To add onto his unluckiness, in part two, Christians start to interfere with the Ibo and Okonkwo loses Nwoye to them. In part three, Okonkwo faces the drastic changes of his fatherland. He is sad and angry because tradition is changing and the things like title and status aren’t as important as before, therefore, his ego is hurt and his hatred of the Christians increase. To continue with the miseries of Okonkwo, after the men of the clan burn down the church because of Enoch’s unmasking of

Fearing that these changes might result his downfall in his social status and destruction of his family, he abhors Christianity. Through this misfortunes, Okonkwo starts to realizes that destiny is more powerful than himself as he mentions, “A man could not rise beyond the destiny of his chi. The saying of the elders was not true – that if a man said yeah his chi also affirmed. Here was a man whose chi said nay despite his own affirmation.” (131) Even though Okonkwo does some violent and cruel things, such as beating his wife and killing Ikemefuna, these are what he has to do to pursue what he believes for and obey the gods. These deeds are not that immoral and sinful to bring great calamities to his life. This demonstrates that fate is more powerful than humans’ acts and beliefs. As a result, Okonkwo, is a man who thinks that he can overcome the destiny, however, he begins to laments for his misfortunes and slowly accept the existent power of fate that dominates his life.

     When Okonkwo returns to the village, he finds that the white man has moved in, bringing Christianity with him. This is a struggle that shows Okonkwo’s inflexibility and objection to change from tradition. Eventually, Okonkwo slay’s a man working for the British and ends up hanging himself as a result of his actions. Suicide is forbidden by the clan,

However,But his culture is changing, the values of manliness are being replaced by the values of the new religion, Cchristianity: “Okonkwo was deeply grieved. And it was not just personal grief. He mourned for the clan, which he saw breaking up and falling apart, and he mourned for the warlike men of Umuofia, who has unaccountably become soft like women”(183). The people of his village are changing, they are no longer the “warlike men” that they once were. He sees how his clan is changing and when he realizes that he can not stop the change, he takes his own life. He cannot not and will not live in a world so different than the one he used to. In the end Okonkwo's manliness is the reason he dies, making it a very fatal flaw

Okonkwo loses his son, Nwoye, to the white men because he converts to Christianity. Okonkwo believes this to be an act of fate, he states, “Why…should he, Okonkwo…be cursed with such a son?” (Achebe 152). This shows that Okonkwo falls victim to his father’s actions, as he was not taught how to be a good father and for this reason Okonkwo is deemed as aggressive towards his children, especially Nwoye , who is quite similar to his grandfather. Consequently, Nwoye drifts apart from Okownkwo, further reinforcing the idea of cause and effect. Okonkwo despised his father, therefore his son Nwoye began to hate him. Furthermore, Okonkwo is “afraid of being thought weak” (Achebe 61), thus he kills Ikemefuna, despite the fact that he was warned by Ezeudu to not be a part of the killing. This results in Okonkwo “accidentally” killing Ezeudu’s son, hence he is banished for seven years. Okonkwo’s exile is a direct result of his fear of weakness and his need to portray loyalty and strength towards his clan. Ultimately, Okonkwo is portrayed as a victim of karma, as it was the clan who had brought Ikemefuna to Umuofia, and Okonkwo had been compelled to provide Ikemefuna with shelter, due to his prosperity. This prosperity was a direct repercussion of Okonkwo’s hatred towards his father and his fear of failure, because he had to prove himself as a non-failure to the clan. Both of these incidents depict Okonkwo’s victimization as a result of both his fathers, and the clan’s bad karma.

Okonkwo, one of the fiercest men of Umofia, had to not only fight against Christianity, but the changes and problems it brought to his village. When Okonkwo’s son gets converted into the new faith and leaves Okonkwo, he holds a bigger grudge against the Christians for taking his eldest son away from him. Apart from all these problems, Okonkwo was exiled for seven years into his motherland and came back to Umofia, where he had tried to regain his position as the Christians coming, Okonkwo went through many changes. He wasn’t very good at change, so many times he found himself in tough situations. In the novel, Things Fall Apart, Achebe uses Okonkwo to show the message that a single character or society’s actions affects another character by Okonkwo disputing with the Christians.

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

At one of his breaking points he killed a missionary in front of the whole clan with his machete and just walked away.(151) Okonkwo believed the reasons of his setbacks were not because of him, but it was because of the White Men, who he believed corrupted everyone to join him had corrupted his chi in a different way. He didn’t think at all it was his fault that his chi had gone bad and had stopped his progression of becoming the best and strongest of the clan. Okonkwo had given up on his life because of the Western ideas, he believed in the old ways and their traditions not these new ideas, he was pressured and pressured himself to the point where he had ended his own

Toil has a negative connotation as it refers to hard work without cessation. While Okonkwo was serving his punishment in exile, Obierika brought word to Mbanta about the government the white men had brought with them. In this government, the District Commissioner oversees the judging of “men who had offended against the white man’s law” (174). The court messengers were the ones who had to do hard work: they, nicknames “Ashy Buttocks,” were responsible for fetching the defendant and forcing prisoners to work (175). When Okonkwo finally returns to Umuofia, the District Commissioner continues to do his facile task of judging the Ibo people and dishing out punishments. To describe the District Commissioner’s work as a toil is an overstatement.

In Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo starts off with so much strength and power. He is a leader in his village and, is always working towards more success.With many mistakes Okonkwo starts to lose everything including his respect and authority. He goes through some big changes, and his life completely turns around. His aggression and violence become out of hand, and he can not control himself. He has to face extreme punishments that change who is and how he feels. Okonkwo’s success decreases throughout Things Fall Apart.

At first okonkwo was high ranking in the nine villages of mbanta for his great wrestling skill and but okonkwo has a terrible downfall that lead to his misfortune and eventually changed his tribe forever.

The metaphor exemplifies a comparison between Okonkwo and a flame. The flame wholly serves a symbol of masculinity, which are a furious temper, destruction, and vigor. Okonkwo ponders about why Nwoye became an utter failure, which is an effeminate man. Okonkwo is severely displeased as he dreads the potential of Nwoye portraying similarities with his father, Unoka. Any display of femininity to Okonkwo is a lack of vigor within a man. He yearns for his sons to become blistering flames, exhibiting traits similar to himself. Essentially, Okonkwo embodying a scorching flame is the utmost demonstration of masculinity, which utterly causes him to scorn the possibility of his son becoming a feminine man.

People change over time and after seven years of exile Okonkwo makes many changes. Okonkwo after seven years of exile Okonkwo speaks out more.(192) “although they had not agreed to kill the missionary or drive away the Christians, they have agreed to do something substantial”. Okonkwo had spoken out about doing something about the missionaries. He is pretty upset that they had not gone to war or done anything about the Christians.

Okonkwo is a strong and confident man who has vowed to never be like his father Unoka. His father was lazy, unsuccessful and carried no titles. The relationship between Okonkwo and his father motivated Okonkwo to gain titles and become successful inside the clan. In this sense, Okonkwo has gained many titles, has three wives, and respected by the clan. Okonkwo chose to feel that identity in the clan was most important, and through this he had become a presence in the clan, noticed by the elders. However after the arrival of missionaries, who had come to convert the clans to Christianity, Okonkwo’s view is completely contradicted by the missionaries. Okonkwo had grown accustomed to members of the clan being ranked by certain tiers, while the