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Violence In Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

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Okonkwo showed numerous accounts of violence in the novel Things Fall Apart. These acts of violence make him a strong and fearless leader of the Ibo tribe. Although, to the reader he is seen as, “a person who does not show approval or favor toward an idea or action” (Dictionary.com) better known as an unsympathetic character. His acts are both towards the his family and the Ibo people but by mainly associated with his third wife Ojiugo, Ezeudu 's son and the white commissioner who is converting the Ibo people to Christianity. Furthermore, the first act of violence created by Okonkwo is ironically during the week of peace. Ojiugo, Okonkwo 's wife decided to get her hair done with a couple of her friends. But when Okonkwo came and the dinner wasn …show more content…

Lastly, near the end of the book the white missionaries had essentially invaded the Ibo tribe and its religion. Okonkwo after “heading back to Umuofia” (Achebe 171) was not really acknowledged or awaited for his return to Umuofia. He was seen as an unsympathetic person when he left and so much had changed that he was now just like any other person. Okonkwo did not like what the white missionaries were up to to say the least. After talking to the commissioner in a heated conversation Achebe writes, “Okonkwo 's machete descended twice and the man 's head lay beside his uniformed body” (Achebe 185) thinking that this act would have the other tribe members in the fight with him. However this was not the case, the other Igbo people enjoyed the white people 's religion and were sick of Okonkwo 's unsympathetic ways of doing things. This lack of help and series of unfortunate events led to Okonkwo 's demise written out by Achebe as “Then they came to the tree from which Okonkwo 's body was dangling and the stopped dead” (Achebe 187). Now ending all that Okonkwo has lived for and leaving his family because of how unsympathetic he really was and acted.
In conclusion, in the book Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo 's life falls apart at the seams because of his unsympathetic acts toward his family and the Ibo people. Furthermore leading him to leave it all behind

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Okonkwo was a big supporter of physical and verbal abuse in his home, especially towards his wives and Nwoye. To Okonkwo, physical abuse was another language. This is how he spoke, and punished, on the occasion of the abuse, and how he had handled the situation. Women was treated poorly in Umuofia because men believe that they were weak and in inadequate. “ Even as a little boy Okonkwo had represented his father 's failure and weakness, and even now he still remembered how he had suffered when a playmate had told him that his father was Agbala.

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Okonkwo Falls Apart Chinua Achebe offers a rare look at the natives perspective during colonialism in his work Things Fall Apart. The central struggle in the main character Okonkwo is that he is beginning to lose his way of life, and he is not able to do anything about it. Conflicts in religious beliefs with the arrival of the missionaries heightens Okonkwo 's internal aggression, and his inability to adapt leads to his downfall.

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In Chinua Achebe’s novel, Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo reacts to cultural collision in his society by having a closed mind and attempting to retaliate, which ultimately leads to his suicide, contributing to the novel’s theme that one

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