Okonkwo Before Colonialism

In most fairy tales and novels a humble male role is used to dictate the normality of writing. In “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe, Okonkwo, a strong male role is not only that, a lead character, but he is also cruel and prone to violent tendencies In the novel Okonkwo experiences harsh changes when the white men first came and at the beginning of colonialism. In “Things Fall Apart”, Achebe uses Okonkwo to display the negative change in everyday Igbo culture after colonialism. In this novel by Achebe, before colonialism was introduced, Okonkwo was a known masculine member of Umuofia. Because of his high place in the Igbo society he feared the idea of not being where he is in life and even claimed “It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to

Okonkwo experienced change because of the actions that lead to his banishment and this made some of his fears come true. Even after these parts of his life have occurred, Okonkwo would have still been able to recover from his incident. However, because of colonialism, this idea of returning to his old life was shot down by the new ideas and changes within the people of Umoufia. This negative change was caused directly by colonialism. In “Things Fall Apart” the Igbo have been shown to have a large amount of culture that was effected by western beliefs. These cultures were no longer retained after white men came and “told them they worshipped false gods, gods of wood and stone” (145). These harsh ideas on the Igbo people led them to abandon their own religion and take up the new religion if it meant change for the Igbo people. This strict cultural change left harsh damage to the current culture of the Igbo people. This culture should have been retained but it was destroyed and abandoned for a new culture, one of the Christian faith and newly formed