The Importance Of Fear In Chinua Achebe's Thing Fall Apart

The novel "Thing's fall apart" by Chinua Achebe is a complex work that masterfully establishes and develops characters through their experience with cultural collision. The way that Achebe accomplishes carefully weaving his implicit claim throughout the work is such a beautiful subtlety that it deserves to be analyzed. The Igbo's pride is constantly challenged by the colonizers as they gain increasingly more power in Africa. The idea of pride is constantly developed throughout the thoughts and actions of the novels protagonist Okonkwo. His response to the colonizers is influenced by his own views on pride and is used by Achebe to illustrate his own opinion on pride.

Okonkwo devotes his life to becoming the opposite of his unsuccessful father. This need to become masculine introduces his fear: “But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of

Prompt 2 Okonkwo is driven by his hatred of his father and the fear he will become like him. Okonkwo saw his father, Unoka, as a coward and is ashamed to be his son. Everything that Okonkwo does is meant to set him apart from the legacy of his father. First, this is evident in his beating of his wives and even his aggression with his children. He is trying to show his strength and ensure he is not portrayed to be like his father: powerless and incapable.

He shows great love and sympathy for his family and cares for them when his father chose to be idle. He also shows his sympathy to his children, biological or not. His unsympathetic tendencies distance him from the reader, he is violent and threatening. In either circumstance, Okonkwo proves to be a memorable character in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, because of his striking characteristics that show him to neither be a hero nor a villain, but a loving an abusive father.

In the book “Things Fall Apart“ Okonkwo is a very strong man and from time to time he starts showing his true self. He has a lot of responsibilities and other things he has to do around the living environment and interact with lots of people. Okonkwo changes from being that strong man, to a man who feels like his tribe is not with him when he wants to go to war with the missionaries. For someone like Okonkwo a lot of people looks up to him and while in the tribe Okonkwo beats his wives and children. Not good behavior for someone who is supposedly looked at as strong.

Things Fall Apart is a novel written by Chinua Achebe. In the novel there is a main character called Okonkwo. He lived in Umuofia where he was also known throughout many of the nine villages around Umuofia. In the beginning of the story we see his overwhelming hatred towards his father Unoka. His father died about ten years ago and had not taken any title and was very much in debt.

Okonkwo dreads that Nwoye will blot the acclaim and honour he has worked so hard to achieve. Nwoye’s “incipient laziness” was causing Okonkwo great deal of distress and he sought to correct him by “constant nagging and beating” and as a result Nwoye was “turning into a sad-faced youth” (Pg. 13). Nwoye is aware that he should adopt the more masculine traits of his tribesmen, as desired by his father but he still prefers his mother’s company. Okonkwo

He sets everything off, he has a huge effect on his family especially his wives. Okonkwo’s response to this evidence is sorrow because over the time that the white men have came and affected their culture. From the novel

He thinks that anyone who is not like that is weak The main reason why Okonkwo is a tragic hero is that of how weak his chi is. The chi takes a big important role in the novel because according to the Igbo people, anything something goes wrong with a person it is because of there bad chi.in the beginning of the book, Okonkwo seems to be the one that has the best chi and has everything going for him at the time. In the beginning of the book the reader is meant though think that Okonkwo will overcome anything that is thrown at him because of his chi. This is shown in the novel when

When Okonkwo's family is faced with a struggle, Okonkwo lets fear rule over his actions of his family’s protection. Okonkwo’s inner thoughts are revealed; “He tried not to think about Ikemefuna, but the more he tried, the more he thought about him” (Achebe 54). Okonkwo, although he seldom openly shows it, cares about his family. After Ikemefuna’s murder, Okonkwo’s true feelings are brought forth by the weak afterthoughts of the son he had grown to care for. Okonkwo’s fear of weakness is an internal conflict that affects Okonkwo through the book.

One way the author critiques the dominant narrative about Okonkwo is by showing how he tries to cover up his feelings in order to show that he is big and bold. For example on page 61 “Okonkwo drew his machete and cut Ikemefuna down. He was afraid of being thought weak.” This emphasizes how Okonkwo was trying to cover up how he really felt about Ikemefuna.

In the beginning of the story, Okonkwo was a very vigorous man who everyone loves. One day a killing happened leaving Okonkwo with a wife and a son, Ikemefuna. He grew to like the young boy, where he is different from his other children, On a fateful day, Okonkwo murders Ikemefuna. Okonkwo had a load of guilt for killing his adoptive son, Ikemefuna.

Fear is the ultimate human emotion. In the historical fiction novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, it explores the protagonist of Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo who is considered a tragic hero. Okonkwo 's tragic imperfection is his trepidation of impuissance and failure. While most characters fear events that are outside of their control, Okonkwo is consumed by a terrible internal worry about himself and his identity. Fear leads him to lash out in some pretty nasty ways: beating his wives, abusing and alienating his oldest son, partaking in the murder of his adoptive son, etc. Fear drives people to sporadic actions through characters, proverbs, and motif of strength.

They had broken into tumult instead of action. He discerned fright in that tumult. He heard voices asking: “Why did he do it?” (Achebe 143). When Okonkwo was faced with his enemies, he makes a rash decision and kills the messenger.

Due to fear of being related to feminine and weakness, Okonkwo was always filled with anger which was