Who Is Okonkwo A Tragic Hero

A great or virtuous character in a dramatic tragedy who is destined for downfall, suffering, or defeat, that is the definition of a tragic hero. In the book, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, Okonkwo has many struggles in his story, but at the same time he was a hero. Some of his struggles where he put to high of expectations on himself to not become like his father in any way possible, and the negative outside forces. Okonkwo was a tragic hero because his mistakes in judgement and outside forces contributing to his downfall. Okonkwo was a tragic hero because his main goal in life was to not be like his father “Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and weakness” as his father only consisted fear failure and weakness (13). This is some what positive but it can also lead to negatives for …show more content…
The white people were one of the main outside forces. While the village was having a meeting messengers came “The white man whose power you know too well has ordered this meeting to stop.” if the have as much power that they can tell them what meetings the village can and can't have this has no positive influence from okonkwo (39). “he (Okonkwo) was not afraid of war. He was a man of action, a man of war” (4) therefore he was not going to sit their and not do anything while the white man ordered his village around even if it would mean harm to himself in this case it did cause him harm.After the messenger said this Okonkwo knew his village was not going to do anything about it and this infuriated him so then “In a flash Okonkwo drew his machete. The messenger crouched to avoid the blow. It was useless.”(40). The white people were a big outside force and a negative one they made him kill the messenger and okonkwo then killed himself because he knew his punishment was not worth living for this makes him a tragic