Name : Jethwa
Monali A
Paper 14 :- The
Affrican Literature
Topic : “Okonkwo”
As
A Tragic Hero In The Things Fall
A Part by Albert
Chinualumogu Achebe.
Roll No: 19
Submitted: Dept .Of .English
M.K.B.U
Email Id: monalijethwa19@gmail.com
Introduction About Author :-
·
Albert
Chinualumogu Achebe was born on November 16, 1930, in Ogidi, a large village in
Nigeria. Although he was the child of a Protestant missionary and received his
early education in English, his upbringing was multicultural, as the
inhabitants of Ogidi still lived according to manyaspects of traditional Igbo
(formerly written as Ibo) culture.
·
Achebe
attended the Government College in Umuahia from 1944 to 1947. He graduated from
University College, Ibadan, in 1953. While he was in college, Achebe studied
history and theology. He also developed his interest in indigenous Nigerian
cultures, and he rejected his Christian name, Albert, for his indigenous one,
Chinua.
Okonkwo as Tragic
Hero:-
·
In Chinua Achebe’s novel, Things Fall Apart,
Okonkwo plays the role of a tragic hero destined to fall from his lofty titles.
From a small child, he struggled to be the opposite of his father. When working
to be successful, Okonkwo “threw himself into it like one possessed. And indeed
he was possessed by the fear of his father’s contemptible life and shameful
death.”
·
The protagonist of Things
Fall Apart, Okonkwo is also considered a tragic hero. A tragic hero holds a
position of power and prestige, chooses his course of action, possesses a
tragic flaw, and gains awareness of circumstances that lead to his fall.
Okonkwo's tragic flaw is his fear of weakness and failure.
·
Although
his father was ill-fated in the eyes of the tribe and his own son, he contained
something that Okonkwo never had: humility and happiness in simple things. Even
when they took Unoka, his father, away to be left in the evil forest to die, he
took his flute, a source of happiness. So Okonkwo with his characteristics
doomed for tragedy, led a seemingly successful life, though a tragic flaw of
pride and wrong decisions robbed him of his self fantasized gilded life.
·
Since tragedy involves the "fall" of
a tragic hero, one theory is that one must have a lofty position to fall from,
or else there is no tragedy (just sorrow). Another explanation of this
characteristic is that tragedies involving people of stature affect the lives
of others. In the case of Okonkwo, the tragedy did not only involve him and his
family, it also involved the whole society.
·
In his thirties, Okonkwo is a leader of the Igbo community of
Umuofia. Achebe describes him as "tall and huge" with "bushy
eyebrows and [a] wide nose [that gives] him a very severe look." When
Okonkwo walks, his heels barely touch the ground, like he walks on springs,
"as if he [is] going to pounce on somebody." Okonkwo "stammers
slightly" and his breathing is heavy.
·
In Chinua
Achebe’s novel, Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo plays the role of a tragic hero
destined to fall from his lofty titles. From a small child, he struggled to be
the opposite of his father. When working to be successful, Okonkwo “threw
himself into it like one possessed. And indeed he was possessed by the fear of
his father’s contemptible life and shameful death.”
·
Although
his father was ill-fated in the eyes of the tribe and his own son, he contained
something that Okonkwo never had: humility and happiness in simple things. Even
when they took Unoka, his father, away to be left in the evil forest to die, he
took his flute, a source of happiness. So Okonkwo with his characteristics
doomed for tragedy, led a seemingly successful life, though a tragic flaw of
pride and wrong decisions robbed him of his self fantasized gilded life.
·
Since tragedy involves the "fall" of
a tragic hero, one theory is that one must have a lofty position to fall from,
or else there is no tragedy (just sorrow). Another explanation of this
characteristic is that tragedies involving people of stature affect the lives
of others. In the case of Okonkwo, the tragedy did not only involve him and his
family, it also involved the whole society.
Okonkwo is renowned as a
wrestler:-
·
Okonkwo is renowned as a wrestler, a fierce warrior,
and a successful farmer of yams (a "manly" crop). He has three wives
and many children who live in huts on his compound. Throughout his life, he
wages a never ending battle for status; his life is dominated by the fear of
weakness and failure. He is quick to anger, especially when dealing with men
who are weak, lazy debtors like his father.
·
However,
Okonkwo overcompensates for his father's womanly (weak) ways, of which he is
ashamed, because he does not tolerate idleness or gentleness. Even though he
feels inward affection at times, he never portrays affection toward anyone.
·
Instead, he isolates himself by exhibiting anger
through violent, stubborn, irrational behavior. Okonkwo demands that his family
work long hours despite their age or limited physical stamina, and he nags and
beats his wives and son, Nwoye, who Okonkwo believes is womanly like his
father, Unoka.
·
Okonkwo is a man
of action, a man of war and a member of high status in the Igbo village. He
holds the prominent position of village clansman, due to the fact that, he had
shown incredible prowess in two intertribal wars.
·
Okonkwo’s hard work had made him a wealthy farmer and a recognized individual
amongst the nine villages of Umuofia and beyond. Okonkwo’s tragic flaw is not
that he was afraid of work, but rather his fear of weakness and failure that
stems from his father’s, Unoka, unproductive life and disgraceful death.
·
“…his whole life
was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and weakness…….
It was not external but lay
deep within himself. It was the fear of himself,
lest he should be found to
resemble his father.”
·
Okonkwo is impulsive; he acts before he thinks.
Consequently, Okonkwo offends the Igbo people and their traditions as well as
the gods of his clan. Okonkwo is advised not to participate in the murder of
Ikefemuna, but he actually kills Ikefemuna because he is "afraid of being
thought weak." When the white man brings Christianity to Umuofia, Okonkwo
is opposed to the new ways. He feels that the changes are destroying the Igbo
culture, changes that require compromise and accommodation — two qualities that
Okonkwo finds intolerable.
.
·
Too proud and inflexible, he clings to traditional
beliefs and mourns the loss of the past. When Okonkwa rashly kills a messenger
from the British district office, his clansmen back away in fear; he realizes
that none of them support him and that he can't save his village from the
British colonists. Okonkwo is defeated.
· In
His Father's Shadow: Okonkwo the Haunted Son
·
Okonkwo is a
man's man; powerful, dominating, and fearsome. However, it's all an act; a mask
he's created to hide the fact that he's running from the memory of his father,
Unoka.
·
Unoka was
everything a man in Okonkwo's culture is not supposed to be. He was lazy, weak,
and an absentee father and husband; he owed debts and never worked to repay
them; he was artistic, weeping over music and poetry. He was a village
laughingstock and not a man at all in Okonkwo's mind.
·
In trying to
prove to the world--and to him that he is nothing like his weak, slovenly,
laughable father, Okonkwo becomes a bully and a hothead. His desperation to
escape the shame of his father in fact binds him even more tightly to him,
coloring everything Okonkwo does, thinks, and feels.
·
He wants
nothing more than to be a true man--which to Okonkwo means beings a strong
man--and in that desperation, everything else falls away: love, compassion,
patience, gentleness, wisdom. Okonkwo spends his entire life destructively
wrestling with ghosts and boxing with shadows.
·
In the process, like a true tragic hero, his
greatest strength--his masculine power--also becomes his greatest weakness,
the Hamartia, or fatal flaw that leads to his destruction.
·
In the
end of the novel, the District Commissioner tells of the novel he is writing
called The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger, and how
Okonkwo’s story would be a perfect edition. The title of the book is a prophesy
of what is to come for the fated African tribe.
He commits suicide, a shameful and disgraceful death like his father's.
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