Okonkwo's Downfall In: Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Okonkwo's Downfall in: Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Okonkwo

Okonkwo, the son of the effeminate and lazy Unoka, strives to make his way in a world that seems to value manliness. In so doing, he rejects everything for which he believes his father stood. Unoka was idle, poor, profligate, cowardly, gentle, and interested in music and conversation. Okonkwo consciously adopts opposite ideals and becomes productive, wealthy, thrifty, brave, violent, and adamantly opposed to music and anything else that he perceives to be "soft," such as conversation and emotion. He is stoic to a fault.

Okonkwo achieves great social and financial success by embracing these ideals. He marries three women and fathers several children. Nevertheless, just as his father was at odds with the values of the community around him, so too does Okonkwo find himself unable to adapt to changing times as the white man comes to live among the Umuofians. As it becomes evident that compliance rather than violence constitutes the wisest principle for survival, Okonkwo realizes that he has become a relic, no longer able to function within his changing society.

Okonkwo is a tragic hero in the classical sense: although he is a superior character, his tragic flaw--the equation of manliness with rashness, anger, and violence--brings about his own destruction. Okonkwo is gruff, at times, and usually unable to express his feelings (the narrator frequently uses the word "inwardly" in reference to Okonkwo's emotions). But his emotions are indeed quite complex, as his "manly" values conflict with his "unmanly" ones, such as fondness for Ikemefuna and Ezinma. The narrator privileges us with information that Okonkwo's fellow clan members do not have--that Okonkwo surreptitiously follows Ekwefi into the forest in pursuit of Ezinma, for example--and thus allows us to see the tender, worried father beneath the seemingly indifferent exterior.

n 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 Okonkwo’s 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 factors.

Okonkwo believes that the worst thing you could do is be a woman while you are a man. This is a character trait that helps tear his life apart. Okonkwo’s father, Unoka, causes Okonkwo to be confused about life. Unoka was a complete failure in the eyes of the Umuofia people because of his effeminate way of thinking, and, “When Unoka died he had taken no title at all and he was heavily in debt.”(p.5, Things Fall Apart). Okonkwo is so greatly ashamed of his father that he based many of his beliefs about how life should be lived by doing things exactly the opposite to that of his father. At first, Okonkwo had much success doing this, but his mind was so strongly warped that he did not develop a well rounded personality and thought only of doing things so he would not be considered a woman. Okonkwo was fully aware that many of the actions that he took, solely to be more of a man, were wrong to do. Unfortunately, Okonkwo so strongly felt that everyone would respect him for making manly decisions in place of wise decisions that he would do things to cause his life to crumble.

Ikemefuna’s death is an excellent example of Okonkwo’s immense fear of being effeminate, like his father. When the Oracle sentenced Ikemefuna to be killed, Okonkwo felt deeply about killing the boy. Ikemefuna did a lot for Okonkwo and his family. He was a role model for Nwoye, “ He made him feel grown up; and they no longer spent the evenings in mother’s hut while she cooked , but know sat with Okonkwo in his obi,…”(p. 45). There was nothing that Okonkwo could do to stop the boy from being killed but he could make things slightly better by not being involved with the death, as Obierika had suggested. Unfortunately, Okonkwo went against what he believed was right and was apart of the party that put Ikemefuna to death, solely because Okonkwo does not want to seem weak, like his father. If Ikemefuna had not been killed, Nwoye would not have turned to the missionaries. In the novel, after the missionaries finished singing, Nwoye pondered about want he had just heard, “The hymn about brothers who sat in darkness and in fear seemed to answer a vague and persistent question that haunted his young soul… the question of Ikemufuna who died.”(p. 128). It has Nwoye believing that Okonkwo had taken part in the death of Ikemufuna that pushed him into Christianity and caused Okonkwo to loose respect in himself for not being able to raise a ‘successful’ son. This also caused Okonkwo to be angry at the missionaries instead of only amused by there ‘foolishness’. Okonkwo’s intense desire to be a man before all else caused him to make unwise decisions that made him pay in time. If Okonkwo did not have this personality trait, perhaps he would make wiser decisions that would have helped him and his family to be more respected.

Okonkwo has a fierce temper that causes him to take actions that do not help him in his quest for power within his tribe. “… Whenever he was angry and could not get his words out quickly enough, he would use his fists.”(p.2). He is a very rash person and, when in a fit of rage, does not think about the consequences of his actions. During the ‘Week of Peace’, Okonkwo was angry at Ojiugo for not arranging Okonkwo’s diner before she left to plait her hair without telling him. “He walked back to his obi to await Ojiugo’s return. And when she returned he beat her very heavily. In his anger he had forgotten that it was the Week of Peace.”(p.25). After this incident, Okonkwo lost much respect from the clan because it was the first time in many years that anyone had committed an nso-ani as Okonkwo did. Okonkwo’s final violent action caused by his temper was when the messenger for the missionaries proclaimed that the tribal meeting being held must stop. Okonkwo cut the messengers head off, “He knew that Umuofia