Okonkwo In Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart
Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart is the story of an Ibo tribe before and during the arrival of white missionaries. The main character, Okonkwo, is a highly respected man within his society who slowly falls in esteem as the story goes on. He involves himself in more and more conflicts with the people around him, including an ongoing battle of impossibly high standards for his son Nwoye, who decides to leave his family in the end for the Anglican Church. The warrior archetype Okonkwo is too rooted in his ways to survive marginalization, but his son Nwoye understands his only choice and resolves the doomed father-son conflict by abandoning his own culture. Okonkwo owes his great success to his unrelenting warrior character, but when his culture begins to fade away and he does not change, it is also his downfall. From the beginning of the story, Okonkwo bases his entire personality
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His father fears raising a son like his own lazy father. As Nwoye grows up, Okonkwo tries to suppress any possible sign of this by “constant nagging and beating” (Achebe 14). From a young age, Nwoye internalizes that he is worthless. He only receives praise from his mother, who, as a woman, is supposedly insignificant. His greatest role model is constantly and violently ashamed of him. Nwoye feels like an outsider. He feels “a snapping inside him” after Okonkwo’s abuses. (Achebe 61). When the missionaries arrive, Nwoye visits the church out of curiosity and returns home to a harsh beating. As soon as Okonkwo lets him go, Nwoye “walk[s] away and never return[s],” leaving for a Christian school in another village (Achebe 152). To save himself, Nwoye has to escape his situation, but that means escaping everything. He cannot pick and choose and in the end has to leave everything that has made him who he is for a chance at
His father fears raising a son like his own lazy father. As Nwoye grows up, Okonkwo tries to suppress any possible sign of this by “constant nagging and beating” (Achebe 14). From a young age, Nwoye internalizes that he is worthless. He only receives praise from his mother, who, as a woman, is supposedly insignificant. His greatest role model is constantly and violently ashamed of him. Nwoye feels like an outsider. He feels “a snapping inside him” after Okonkwo’s abuses. (Achebe 61). When the missionaries arrive, Nwoye visits the church out of curiosity and returns home to a harsh beating. As soon as Okonkwo lets him go, Nwoye “walk[s] away and never return[s],” leaving for a Christian school in another village (Achebe 152). To save himself, Nwoye has to escape his situation, but that means escaping everything. He cannot pick and choose and in the end has to leave everything that has made him who he is for a chance at