Sasha Durrum
Mrs. Dunlap
English 301
7 January 2023
Okonkwo's Tragic Flaws.
Okonkwo, the main character of Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, is a strong and independent man who ends up self-destructing through his tragic flaws. He develops these tragic flaws through his life from fear of becoming his father, and the pride he got from gaining fame so young. Okonkwo starts gaining his pride as a young man, by beating a wrestling champion called ‘the cat’. Even though Okonkwo had his honorable and respectable social status, he still had these tragic flaws of anger, excessive pride, and fear of weakness, that eventually led to his self-destruction.
Okonkwo's anger and how he released it was a major part of his downfall, especially because it caused him to do things without thinking it through first. On page 30 Okonkwo was described as “not the man to stop beating somebody half-way through, not even for fear of a goddess”. This shows how Okonkwo has such deep and strong anger that he would not even stop beating someone even in fear of a god/goddess. Another time Okonkwo was completely overcome by anger and almost killed one of his wives was on page 39, “Unfortunately for her, Okonkwo head it and ran madly into his room for the loaded gun, ran
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“His whole life was dominated by fear of failure and weakness” (13), this quote shows that his fear of failure was so deep that it completely dominated his whole life and affected his relationships. In the end Okonkwo was so afraid of the ‘weakness’ that was brought to his clan and had taken over Nwoye, he killed himself. Obierika says “You drove him to kill himself; and now he will be buried like a dog” (208), Okonkwo ended up choosing the ‘weakest’ path that he could have because he knew that he could not live with this new religion and ‘weak’ way of life with no fighting