An Analytical Essay on Excessive Pride in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

Excessive Pride in Things Fall Apart

In Chinua Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart, a well-known aphorism, "pride goes before a fall", was used. I agreed with and supported this statement. The story line itself backed up this statement as well. Through Okonkwo's hard work he became a "great man" with a sense of pride and haughtiness, who then suffered a loss of pride, which ultimately led to his down fall and his own suicide.

This book went along with the commonly stated cliché. In addition to that, there was a widely known joke that went well with this. "One day there was an airplane pilot flying Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Bill (a kid), and Billy Gram. Something went wrong with the plane, so it had to be abandoned. The airplane pilot strapped on a parachute and said to them, "there is only four parachutes but I am taking one." Bill Clinton grabbed the second one and said, "I am the most important man and my country needs me so I am taking one too." Then, Bill Gates grabbed the third one and said, "I am the smartest man in the world and my people need me." So, Bill (a kid) was just looking... at the fourth parachute and Billy Gram said to him, "I am an old man and you are young, you have your whole life ahead of you, take the last parachute." Finally, Bill (a kid) looked up at him and said, "I was not thinking about that, it's just that the smartest man in the world took my backpack."

As you saw from the book and the joke, both Okonkwo, and Bill Gates were full of prejudice pride. They thought they were "great men", and saw others as inferior to them and incapable of living substantially if they were not the backbone. Okonkwo's pride grew immensely when he was an eighteen-year-old boy growing up in Umuofia. His father, Unoka was a lazy and imprudent man so Okonkwo sought to be everything his father was not. He threw Amalinze the Cat, who was a wily craftsman, and great wrestler that was unbeaten for seven years from Umuofia to Mbaino. That victory made Okonkwo known past the nine villages.