The characterisation of Okonkwo in 'Things Fall Apart'

In his counter-colonial narrative, Chinua Achebe chooses a protagonist named Okonko, who can also be labeled a tragic hero. This narrative, titled 'Things Fall Apart' is about the colonisation of the Igbo people. Okonkwo is depicted as a character who is immensely powerful, and the ideal man from the Igbo culture. As a teen, Okonkwo gains fame and popularity by throwing Cat, one of the best wrestlers of the time. As he gets older, he starts going to wars. He is said to have brought back five heads from the wars that he had fought in. He is then kicked out of Umofia, his native village, for mistakenly killing a fellow clansman. Okonknwo then flees to take refuge in his motherland, where he prepares to come back in style to Umofia. He planned what he was going to do once he got back, but unfortunately when he did, Umofia had been completely changed.

All the men had seemingly become like 'women', and the Christian missionaries were taking over. The youth had gone to schools in search of better job opportunities. Okonkwo then began to realise the gradual destruction of the society he had worked so hard to become powerful in. Eventually, Okonkwo realises that the organic and integrated society he liver in as a child had now become a hapless system of chaos. Not bring able to handle all this, he had little thought but to kill himself. Achebe has presented the protagonist, Okonkwo, as a tragic hero who symbolises Igbo society himself. The frictional and uncertain nature of Okonkwo is attributed to the culture, which sometimes contradicts itself. In an already delicate structure of society, further intervention by the colonial powers leads to the death of Okonkwo, symbolising the demise of the Igbo culture.

The varying contexts that the book is set in leads to various themes. As mentioned above, the abandoning of the Igbo culture by the youth and the outcasts provides a theme of change, struggle and tradition. The youth of the village thought a lot provoked them to join the missionaries. Even though they had to struggle and leave their families, the youth and outcasts prevailed in leaving the Igbo culture. This ensued a chaos in the Igbo community that was now unstoppable. Another theme is that of the varying interpretations of masculinity. Okonkwo considered masculinity to be something different. If a person wasn't powerful and intimidating, he was considered effeminate in Okonkwo's eyes. Similar situations lead to the development of a lot of other themes, all of which cannot be explored in the length of this blog post.