Fear In Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

Fear is powerful, a person you might see as strong could easily be brought down by the strength of fear. The life of the “fearless leader” Okonkwo, in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, is an example of what the power of fear is capable of. Okonkwo is a brave and strong leader to the fictional Nigerian tribe of Ibo. Everyone sees him as masculine and fearless to anything, but truthfully he is not exactly that. His whole life is based off the fact that he does not want to be like his father. In Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, irony and static characterization are used to show that even the strongest of people can dwindle to the power of fear. Irony can be defined as an event that is deliberately contrary to one expects. Okonkwo was known by everyone across the land as a prosperous and dominant leader,

Everyone bowed down to him without knowing that he his whole life is based and lived off of a fear that tears him down gradually throughout his lifetime. He was portrayed to the reader and to his fellow villagers as fearless,”... he [Okonkwo] was not afraid of war. He was a man of action, a man of war. Unlike his father he could stand the look of blood. In Umuofia’s latest war he was the first to bring home a human head,”(Achebe 40). Okonkwo’s father, Unoka, was a very peaceful man, and avoids the first sight of violence. Although peaceful, he was also a very decisive, untrustworthy man. The tribe of Ibo looked at Unoka as a coward, since he tricked everyone by not paying them back for anything and everything that he “borrowed”. Okonkwo saw this and swore to be an antipode of his father’s persona by counteracting any weakness that came towards him. He did not let himself get conquered by cowardice or allow people see any kind of feminine in his personality,”If you want to conquer fear, don't sit home and think