Achbe created the character of okonkwo in the template of a european hero to show Europeans that Africans aren’t so different from them. Okonkwo often has struggles with his oldest son, Nwoye. This theme of father/son struggles may have been strange to native Africans but to Europeans it was commonplace. One specific example can be found in Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare’s most famous work, it could be argued, focuses entirely around a father/son struggle not too different from that of Okonkwo and Nwoye; the son who wants to go his own way and be his own person (by marrying who he chooses) and the father who forbids it, ending with the ultimate falling out in the death of Romeo. In Things Fall Apart, we see a similar father/son narrative;