Things Fall Apart

A detailed Summary of Things Fall Apart

Okonkwo, the main character in Chinua Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart, was a tragic figure. Though he strove to be a good, moral man, his fears and inflexible nature caused him to step out of line with his culture's definition of a good man. Every time he did so, he was in some way chastised or prodded back in the right direction, until finally he went too far and ultimately broke from his society entirely.

"Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness." His father, Unoka, was a poor, lazy, gentle soul who was regarded by the clan to be a failure. He died without title and massively in debt. "Unoka was never happy when it came to wars. He was in fact a coward and could not bear the sight of blood." This did not sit well with Okonkwo. "Even as a little boy he had resented his father's failure and weakness..." When Okonkwo matured, this resentment blossomed and caused Okonkwo to be "...ruled by one passion - to hate everything that his father Unoka had loved." So Okonkwo hated gentleness and idleness, which he saw as weakness and laziness, and cowardliness and peace, which he drove out by becoming a harsh and domineering man prone to violence and war. "...[I]

The next major incident occurs during the Week of Peace, a sacred time for the clan. One of his wives leaves to visit a friend, failing to cook a meal and feed her children, "And when she returned he beat her heavily. In his anger he had forgotten that it was the Week of Peace. His first two wives ran out in great alarm pleading with him that it was the sacred week. But Okonkwo was not the man to stop beating somebody half-way through, not even for fear of a goddess." He pays the fine for his offense against the earth-goddess, but shows only his harsh, warrior face. "Inwardly, he was repentant. But he was not the man to go about telling his neighbors that he was in error. And so people said he had no respect for the gods of the clan." Okonkwo again stepped outside the moral bounds of his culture, and again was chastised, this time with a fine and social stigma. Again, his harsh nature and inability to admit any sign of weakness caused trouble for Okonkwo.

When the white man comes looking for Okonkwo to bring him to trial, he is nowhere to be found. Finally, they are taken to the spot where Okonkwo has hanged himself, taking his own life. When the white man asks why he was not taken down, the clan replies, "It is against our custom... it is an abomination for a man to take his own life. It is an offence against the Earth, and a man who commits it will not be buried by his clansmen." Okonkwo has finally gone too far, and become totally removed from the clan, from both viewpoints. He is dead, and the clan has rejected him. Okonkwo's fears have finally realized themselves, and he dies in shame and a failure.

At one point, a clan member "... contradicted him at a kindred meeting which they held to discuss the next ancestral feast. Without looking at the man Okonkwo had said: 'This meeting is for men.' The man who had contradicted him had no titles. That was why he had called him a woman. Okonkwo knew how to kill a man's spirit. Everybody at the kindred meeting took sides with Osugo when Okonkwo called him a woman." This happened early in the book, setting up the pattern for the clan's reaction to Okonkwo when moves away from his societies ideal of a good man. Here, Okonkwo's offense is minor - he is ungracious when contradicted in public by a 'lesser' man - and the clan's reaction is equally minor. Unfortunately, Okonkwo's nature does not allow him to change. He is the way he his, and will not admit that he is wrong.

During the preparations for the

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Approximate Word count = 1678
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Novels