Okonkwo as a Tragic Hero in Things Fall Apart

Okonkwo's desperation not to be like his father bleeds into his relationship with his own family, especially his children. He becomes a tyrant at home. This is especially true of his treatment of his twelve-year-old son, Nwoye, in whom Okonkwo perceives signs of his father's weakness and idleness. He frequently beats and berates the boy.

Things in Okonkwo's home start to improve for a time but Ikemefuna, a sixteen-year-old boy given to the village of Umofia, arrives as a peace offering from a neighboring village. Okonkwo takes the boy into his home and quickly grows to love him. Okonkwo even thinks he sees Nwoye becoming more manly under Ikemefuna's influence.

But this hopeful time does not last. Okonkwo's demons linger. He violates the Week of Peace, disrespecting the gods by beating his young wife. His community is shocked by this sacrilege. It would be like showing up drunk to a house of worship and peeing on the altar.

When Okonkwo and his family return from exile, Umofia is not the same. The novel is set in the 1890s, when European imperialism was reaching its peak worldwide. The colonizer has come, led by Christian missionaries seeking to 'civilize' the natives by converting them. Okonkwo is outraged to see his people so changed. He attempts to ignite a rebellion to reassert the masculine power that once made him a great leader, but the community does not join him because they do not want to fight.

Okonkwo's downfall echoes other great tragic heroes in literature such as King Oedipus. Okonkwo is a great leader of his people, a man's man, whose tragedy is driven both by his manly pride and a shameful family legacy. Like Shakespeare's King Lear, Okonkwo's destruction begins first with the destruction of his family, specifically the mistreatment of his children. Also, like Shakespeare's Othello and the many literary legends surrounding King Arthur, Okonkwo is a great warrior, one who has risen from humble beginnings to become a bold, courageous fighter for his people. But these great gifts are cast aside because of real or imagined betrayal. Othello fears his wife's betrayal; Arthur experiences the actual betrayal of his wife and favored knight; and Okonkwo feels betrayed by his clansmen in failing to fight for their beloved Umofia.

Okonkwo, the protagonist in Chinua Achebe's 1958 masterpiece, Things Fall Apart, is the epitome of the tragic hero. Okonkwo's hamartia, or fatal flaw, is his masculine power, which cancels out all other things: gentleness, love, compassion, wisdom. Okonkwo strives to be the manliest man of the Igbo village of Umofia. He wants to be nothing like his father, Unoka, who was weak, effeminate, idle, and debt-ridden. Trying to prove his masculinity, Okonkwo commits a series of acts, which offend the gods and spirits.