Okonkwo, grew up with a father that was seen as cowardly by the village and did everything to become the opposite of his father. His entire life he strived to be the best and became the extreme opposite of his father. Okonkwo found home in his success and constantly being above everyone else. After all of his successes, white men started coming into his village and changed how the society functioned. Okonkwo could not properly change with the times and became without a home.…
Okonkwo shows the traits of being a hard worker and Okonkwo constantly tries to produce yams for his family. Okonkwo wants to be the exact opposite of his poor father and he works hard…
Ezinma’s Eulogy For Okonkwo It’ s a shame that my father went out the way he did, a disgrace even. However we must look past his suicide and towards the true meaning of his life. Okonkwo started with nothing, and became one of the greatest rulers in Umuofia. He was raised by his lazy father, who had received no title in his long lifetime. I remember Okonkwo telling me stories about the people who would laugh at his father and call him a loafer.…
“Whenever the thought of his father’s weakness and failure troubled him he expelled it by thinking about his own strength and success.” (Achebe 66) Okonkwo’s father had a status that would equal a woman’s. Which in this culture is immensely looked down upon. His father’s weak status bothers him so much that the only way to make him feel satisfied is when he thinks of how much better he is than his father.…
What is a tragic hero? According to Aristotle, a tragic hero is a literary, noble character who makes a judgment mistake that eventually leads to his/her downfall. In the book Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo is our tragic hero. Okonkwo is considered a tragic hero due to his leadership and eventual nobility, his big reverse as a character, and his tragic flaws that lead to his downfall. First of all, Okonkwo starts off as a poor child as shown when the book states “Okonkwo did not have the start in life which many young men usually had, he did not inherit a barn from his father.…
In his culture, being anything but a strong, titled man was a disgraceful thing to be. Due to his fear, he became an established warrior who acted towards the overall good of the tribe and did everything he could to be an ideal Ibo tribe member. This is shown when the author says, “Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond. His fame rested on solid personal achievements” (3). Okonkwo’s happiness came from his status in Umuofia because he was incredibly insecure about his position in society.…
(pg10). Okonkwo began to work tirelessly to provide for his family in order to make up for his father’s failures. His father left nothing in inheritance for him so he was forced to start his own barn. “It was slow and painful. But he threw himself into it like one possessed.…
His hard work brought him a good yam farm, three wives, and several children. Okonkwo then experiences a fall from grace, losing status and fortune, and is exiled from his tribe for several years. He triumphantly travels back to his home after seven years, only to find it completely changed. Okonkwo’s destiny is that of the protagonists of Elizabethan tragedy: he goes from good status and popularity into a steep nosedive of poverty and paranoia, and the story concludes with his own suicide. Okonkwo did not achieve his popularity without hard work.…
In terms of classical literature and theatre, dating back to Ancient Greece, a tragic hero is a man of great wealth or power who falls from grace. This fall happens at times because of external forces, but more often the man’s downfall is caused by none other than himself. At times, this curse belies the character by an action of choice, be it due to personal failings or because of a misunderstanding. The downfall of Okonkwo, in spite of seeming to be a far different story altogether, is not so different from. Okonkwo comes from humble beginnings.…
Okonkwo thought of himself as an independent leader of the Umuofia clan. He looks at his father to be lazy, not being able to support his family and a coward. The reason why Okonkwo acted the way he did is because he didn’t want to resemble anything his father did. Okonkwo…
The quote means that Okonkwo is a responsible man that pays off all his debts and deserves to dine with the elders. Although Okonkwo can be seen as apathetic and harsh, he is still a successful man who has won the respect of others. He strives for greatness, in hope of leaving behind his father’s rough image. Okonkwo is a powerful man who feels that he must have everything in order. This quote means that he is constantly in fear of becoming a failure and being seen as weak.…
This fear of weakness drives Okonkwo’s commitment to militancy, and his desire to be a defender of the tribe and the tribe’s way of life. Thus,…
Okonkwo lives his life with the fear of becoming just like his father. This fear encourages and promotes his activeness in the community and his puts pressure on him too be better. “His whole…
Okonkwo was a rich and respected warrior who brought honor to the Umuofia clan. He was very different from his late father, Unoka, who was weak, sensitive, and ultimately a failure. Okonkwo never wanted to be like his father, and even “as a little boy he had resented his father’s failure and weaknesses” (Achebe 13). This was his tragic flaw, he under no circumstances wanted to be a failure or “resemble his father” in any way (Achebe 13). Among the Umuofia clan “a man was judged according to his worth and not according to the worth of his father” (Achebe 8).…
The title of Chinua Achebe’s novel, Things Fall Apart suggests tragedy which the novel clearly portrays in relation to what happens to Okonkwo, the main character. Okonkwo has ongoing issues coping with his life because of his father’s past, he experiences the pain of his Igbo tribe falling apart because of government and the coming of missionaries, and he suffers with guilt over the death of the son he took in and accepted as his own. Okonkwo faces many trials and tribulations throughout his life, and much of this is due to his father. He tries hard his entire life to be totally opposite of his father. He wants to be seen as strong, but his mind oftentimes tells him that he is weak.…