Okonkwo's Bad Decisions

Decisions are a necessary part of life, in the novel by Chinua Achebe many decisions are made, both good and bad. But to make a “good or bad” decision is subjective to who is making the decision at hand. One of the main reasons Things Fall Apart is important is that before it, most novels about Africans in English had been written by Europeans, providing an unfair vantage point of the tribesmen and displaying them as uncivilized savages. But they were only perceived as such because of decisions they believed to be good. Achebe turned the conventional European notion of Africans being heathens completely around. Questioning what were the right and wrong choices with characters that demonstrate the raw emotions of people; humans in the truest sense of the word. Exposing the immense failure of people to see other human beings as equals in the name of religion and cultural differences. We see the viciously repeated realities that are produced by both individual and corporate power when it’s based in fear, and ignorance at …show more content…
Okonkwo is a man known “throughout the nine villages and even beyond, whose fame rested on solid personal achievements.”(Chapter 1) He is primarily known for his strength and his wrestling ability. During his adolescence, at one of the community festivals before his entire tribe, Okonkwo defeated “The Cat,” the champion wrestler, in a match. “The old men agreed it was one of the fiercest since the founder of their town engaged a spirit of the wild for seven days and seven nights.”(Chapter 1, page 3) Therefore we know from the beginning that Okonkwo is a man held in high esteem not only for his wrestling ability, but also because he “had risen so suddenly from great poverty and misfortune to be one of the lords of his clan.”(Chapter