Okonkwo's Failure

In the novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, the main character, Okonkwo, is a strong and powerful man of the Ibo tribe in Africa. Okonkwo faces consequences as a result of the constant determination to be the opposite of his father. This event starts a long line of repercussions for Okonkwo and his family. Okonkwo’s mistakes result in his downfall and the undoing of a great warrior. Okonkwo had numerous achievements that eventually started a chain reaction of mistakes. Okonkwo’s irrational fear of how people in his village might think that he resembles his lazy father causes him to work very hard to be successful. Okonkwo made the choice to not be like his father because his father was lazy, weak, and unsuccessful. This puts pressure …show more content…
Okonkwo’s fear of being like his father caused him to kill himself so that he would not be killed by the court messenger after he murdered a white person. Okonkwo wants to take himself rather than being killed dishonorably. This is ironic because suicide is considered weak and Okonkwo worked his whole life to be a “strong man”. Okonkwo lives in Umuofia, his fatherland. A man lives in his fatherland when life is good. Okonkwo’s gun went off during a funeral tradition in which the men shoot guns into the air. In this event, Okonkwo accidentally shoots the son of the man whose funeral they were attending. Okonkwo and his family must go into exile and live there for seven years because Okonkwo unintentionally murdered the son of an Umuofian elder. Now, not only does Okonkwo have to suffer for his mistakes, but his family has to go through it with him. Okonkwo goes to Mbanta, while he is exiled, his motherland. A man goes to his motherland to seek refuge when life is not good. When Okonkwo returns to Umuofia after being in Mbanta for seven years, he sees the Christian missionaries have taken over. This is a consequence for Okonkwo because he was a great warrior of Umuofia and now he was not there to protect the Ibo people. Now when he returns he finds out that the Ibo culture, tradition, and society is much different than it was before he left. They have adopted Christian morals and …show more content…
Okonkwo is stubborn with his own original beliefs and refuses to adapt to the Christian lifestyle that the missionaries enforce on the Ibo tribe. Okonkwo not approving of Nwoye converting to Christianity shows how he refuses to accept the Christian presence in Umuofia. Nwoye changed his name to Isaac, shortly after becoming a Christian, and started attending a new training college for teachers. When Nwoye is influenced by the Christian conduct, Okonkwo does not approve and rejects Nwoye as his son. Okonkwo has a short fuse, so when the court messenger storms into a meeting among the Umuofian men. In attempt to end the meeting Okonkwo pulls out a machete. Okonkwo killed the man quickly and without hesitation. His short temper could not handle the court messenger thinking that he could stop the meeting because he is white. The power of the while men in Africa is overpowering to the elders. Okonkwo is a member of the egwugwu and the power that the white men have over them pertains to the power the white men have over Africa. A rhetorical shift occurs in the last chapter of Things Fall Apart, the narrator shifts from Okonkwo to the district commissioner. The district commissioner thinks about how he could write a paragraph on Okonkwo’s story. Okonkwo was a great man and he had many impressive accomplishments, so for him to say that he could write a paragraph on Okonkwo, when