Okonkwo's Fear In Things Fall Apart

Okonkwo in “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe, is thought of as a strong, great man. Yes, he is a fierce warrior and a very strong man. Another reason to respect him is that he is a very wealthy and successful yam farmer in his clan. Okonkwo also is married to three wives. All of this is just the beginning, okonkwo is not all that great of a man deep down as is shown in the story. Okonkwo’s greatest fear is of being weak, but the irony is that his strength is just to cover up his own weakness which is very much existent as shown by his acting in the end of the book. There is a lot inside okonkwo that is covered up and his greatest fear is to show it. Okonkwo is a warrior on the outside, but in reality he is just using strength as a mechanism to cover up his fear because “Unlike his father, he could stand the look of blood” (10), but in reality he uses the look of blood to help him strengthen his internally weak self. The fact that Okonkwo manages to bring back his clan’s first human head in war shows that he does have a very rugged mindset resting on top of a fine line that can be

Brown, have settled in umuofia and are now consulting with the clan elders about bringing in their religion “The church had come and left many astray.” (174). Many great men of the clan had turned over to the new religion, and this greatly displeased Okonkwo. “Okonkwo’s head was bowed in sadness when Obierika told him these things.” (175) Okonkwo begins to peel away even more after realising what has become of his clan, and this shows his pure inner self without any of the tough guy cover up, so to speak. Okonkwo then turns to the brink of happiness just before another fall to depression which eventually leads to the killing of a messenger “he knew that umuofia would not go to war. He new because he had let the other messengers escape.” (205) and eventually,