Things Fall Apart 375

Things fall apart was a difficult read. I read through the slooooow humiliation of the Okonkwo as he ultimately took his own life. A once affluent man reduces himself to the end of a rope shatters ones image of a warrior. I think there was more to his character than a troubled and incapable man.


Through the decimation of his culture by the white man, culturally, the plight of the Umuofia people was destined for failure. What is ironic at the ending chapter is that Okonkwo hangs himself in the village. This is a direct violation of belief and cultural norm for a tribesman. The irony is that no clan member can touch his body as it is considered an “offense of the earth”. It was also considered evil to touch Okonkwo dead body. The very missionaries who brought Christianity, government, and a promise to end the savagery had to bury the savage. The man who ended his life for what I believe was to send the message that the culture was dead. By violating the tribal custom of not killing he became the ends of a means. The argument is old but I think the writer had intended the message. I believe the presence of white men were the ultimate death as in any primitive culture. Look back at the Korowai Tribe and the Dutch missionaries. Upon seeing what the Korowai deemed a “ghost”, they cannibalized, or as rumor has it, ate the missionaries. The Native Americans succumbed to the white man only after they created genocide upon the tribes, reducing their numbers by over 90%. Indigenous cultures with isolated languages and ancient cultures have never been documented as successful. I have to say that is unfortunate and question who the documenter is?

But Okonkwo was deemed a failure for his flawed character and his inability to recognize strength through other means than violence. His fear of replicating his father’s lazy and emotionally inferior behaviors is what he ultimately becomes. But I see another side to his character. As the story talks of the locusts that have come before, Okonkwo may have had insight to the white man’s ways and their destruction. The passage reads:

And at last the locusts did descend. They settled on every tree and on every blade of grass; they settled on the roofs and covered the bare ground. Mighty tree branches broke away under them, and the whole country became the brown-earth color of the vast, hungry swarm (pg.56).

The passage speaks of the white men, missionaries, or colonizers who are all consuming and will keep coming. Okonkwo was unable or unwilling to deal with the changing and ever-present intrusions put upon his tribe. His lashing out in anger, killing the messenger, and his inability to communicate his traditions to his own son suggests a man who can no longer be in command of his surroundings. His language and way of life is ultimately challenged as the colonizers entice tribal members with prosperity by abandoning of tribal traditions. My question in any indigenous culture is what is the final goal? Raping the savage to remove the savage does not make a man.

This is a small fragment of the book but one that stuck with me when Okonkwo took his own life. Was he a failure in his own eyes or sending a message to the tribal council? Suicide is the most selfish act and is not done on a whim. Okonkwo made a deliberate act of death and I feel the message was clear.