Okonkwo Human Condition

Things Fall Apart Essay Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe is a story that shows deep connections to Nigerian culture. There are quite a few characters in the book but the main protagonist of the books name is Okonkwo. Okonkwo is shown at times to be abusive, stubborn and tempered, because of this it can be assumed that Achebe uses Okonkwo to analyze the human condition. The son of the lazy Unoka, Okonkwo, has the main goal of living up to his village's standard of manliness. In so doing, he rejects everything in which he believes his father stood up for. Since he does that, Okonkwo prioritizes his own goals and at times gets too caught up in himself which ends up hurting the people he loves in some way. An example of this can be shown through

You see this element throughout the book quite a few times. This characteristic that he has had throughout the book has questioned his role as being a protagonist and also his character growth. Okonkwo mostly beats the people in his own family. He has been shown to be abusive to his sons and his own wife. It is also shown that he will beat them for even the littlest things. For example, Okonkwo beats one of his wives because she forgot to make dinner before she left to get her hair braided. The book states “He walked back to his obi to await Ojiugo return. And when she returned he beat her very heavily.” This basically is showing how abusive and aggressive Okonkwo is. This part analyzes the human condition in a way because it shows how he let his feelings get the best of him, in which it is a normal thing for humans to do. It’s not only the fact that Okonkwo beat his wife that makes it bad but at the time he did it. Okonkwo commits a sin against the earth goddess by beating his wife during the Week of Peace. The earth goddess thinks domestic abuse is fine as long as it isn’t during Peace Week. Okonkwo deliberately continues to not follow his tribe's traditions even when he realizes his that he is doing wrong. His abusiveness most likely comes from the hot temper he has. Because of this, he loses sight on how to deal with situations correctly which links to the human

He gets this trait from trying his absolute hardest to best his dad. This is what causes him to get frustrated with himself and others easily. One of the most evident cases of this was when the Christian missionaries came into his village. Okonkwo did not like these people at all. He was especially mad when he came back from being gone for seven years to come back to his village and see the villagers being converted to Christianity. He wants to drive the missionaries out with force and violence. The elders don’t agree with Okonkwo and think that the missionaries are just fine. This is until Enoch’s crime of unmasking an egwugwu. Okonkwo and the other leaders of Umuofia retaliate by destroying the missionaries’ church. Okonkwo instead kills a missionary. Things Fall Apart states “In a flash, Okonkwo drew his machete. The messenger crouched to avoid the blow. It was useless. Okonkwo’s machete descended twice and the man’s head lay beside his uniformed body.”Okonkwo has killed one of the innocent Christian missionaries off of pure anger for the village. He does this in hopes of starting some kind of war between the missionaries and the villagers but he doesn’t get the support he wants. He then thinks that the village has given on him and he kills himself. Chinua Achebe has made Okonkwo's anger a main part of how he analyzed the human condition. He showed how Okonkwo let his anger completely