Okonkwo's Denial To Change In Things Fall Apart

The Necessity of Change: Okonkwo’s Denial to change in Things Fall Apart

People change, not everyone stays the same throughout their life. This is what happens to Okonkwo, in Chinua Achebe's, Things Fall Apart. He was a man, but every man has a weak spot which if touched will make him break. Okonkwo rejected everything his father stood for. Unoka (Okonkwo's Father) was lazy, poor, soft, and a coward. Okonkwo adapted every feature opposite to his fathers. Okonkwo was strong, rich, brave, and strives to show no affection for anyone, as this was considered soft and weak. The book shows how Okonkwo couldn't adapt to the new 'White men' coming in, thus destroying him as he gets stripped of his manly status. Okonkwo works hard for his manhood but

Okonkwo then later goes to live with his Mother’s family in Mbanta. Okonkwo felt that everything came to an end. He was saddened because he was stripped of his manhood and his goal: “a great passion—to become one of the lords of the clan” (121). He then later was presented with something to distract him from his loss, this was the arrival of the ‘White Men’. When Nwoye, Okonkwo’s son, converts to Christianity, it upsets Okonkwo at first, “but on further thought he told himself that Nwoye was not worth fighting for” (142). Okonkwo had always feared that Nwoye would end up like Unoka, thus making himself forget about Nwoye. He convinced himself that once he sets foot back in Umuofia, he would be back where he belonged, thinking that his community hadn’t changed, and he would start working hard on his farm once again. Therefore making him think that Umuofia would be able to cope with the disturbance of the ‘White Men’ easily. Finally, when Okonkwo did return, he realized that this was not the case. But instead of Umuofia battling the Whites, “it seemed as if the very soul of the tribe wept for a great evil that was coming – its own death” (172), he once again went into a state of turmoil and killed himself. The whites attracted so many members of Umuofia, especially the ones who possessed the lowest positions and the ones who questioned the previous order, to critically weaken the village’s base. The new ways of Umuofia were completely different from what Okonkwo had placed as his road in his youth. Okonkwo did one last thing that his father would never have had the strength to do. In a way, not only did Okonkwo die, the values and traditions of Umuofia died with him because of how Umuofia accepted the new