Okonkwo's Tragic Hero In Things Fall Apart

In the novel Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo is a tragic hero. Okonkwo is the protagonist of Things fall apart and in the novel Okonkwo demonstrates hamartia, peripeteia, as well as anagnorisis. Okonkwo is a hardworking bellwether of the Igbo community of Umuofia. Okonkwo’s tragic imperfection is his trepidation of failure. His father was the derivative of this trepidation. Okonkwo's father was an indolent character who had accumulated so much debt he owed every single individual in the clan some amount of money, some more than others. Okonkwo’s inability to relinquish his trepidation of failure led to his fall from grace in the Igbo community and eventual suicide. This makes what makes Okonkwo a tragic hero.
Okonkwo is the type of man who communicates …show more content…
Okonkwo often wonders how he, a man of great vigor and work ethic, could have had a son who was feminine and weak. If Okonkwo had stopped blaming Nwoye and looked at his problem he would have realized that he has done to his son what his father Unoka has done to himself. Okonkwo thought that "No matter how prosperous a man was, if he was unable to rule his women and his children, he was not authentically a man" (Achebe 45). Okonkwo wrestles with his fear to the point that causes him to lose control of his family, position in the village, and even himself. Like many heroes, Okonkwo’s imperfection, fear, withal makes him extremely hubris. The oldest man present verbally expressed sternly that “those whose palm-kernels were cracked for them by a benevolent spirit should not forget to be humble" (Achebe 28). Okonkwo’s tragic downfall is caused by the shift by the arrival of the missionaries. The missionaries at the start of the novel cause Okonkwo’s tragic imperfection to be exacerbated. Okonkwo interprets the change to be associated with his father, and as a result, of this interpretation, Okonkwo only knows how to react to violence. He derives great contentment, from the fact that he is a self-established man and cerebrates that to transmute would mean submitting to an outside force in this case that would be …show more content…
Especially after his confinement along with a few clansmen for burning a church as a result of the Enoch’s unveiling of an egwugwu in public. Hoping that the clan will follow his lead, Okonkwo decapitates a messenger of the British who was sent to break up a village meeting regarding the possibility of going to war. However, the clan instead of following Okonkwo’s action is shocked by Okonkwo’s brutality. Okonkwo knows at that point that his clan will not go to war because the clan had broken into tumult in instead of action. Okonkwo now knows that he must now face his disgrace alone, so he decided to hang