Things Fall Apart Okonkwo's Suicide

There seems to be no general critical agreement as to the reason for the suicide of Okonkwo, the protagonist of Chinua Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart. In a case like this, where the novelist himself has displayed* considerable tact, the difficulty here is preeminently one of submitting the event to a reasonable perspective. Intuition can only help the reader if he/she has an intimate awareness of the cultural context pre-colonial lgboland, and not many of Achebe's reader’s have. It is not, however, any more fraught an issue than other refinements of motive in a book whose style precludes full elaboration.
Achebe foreshadows Okonkwo’s suicide as his is not the first suicide by hanging in the book. At the beginning of his career, Okonkwo,

176). Another possibility is that he feels the disgrace of the homicide he had just perpetrated against the Commissioner's messenger. This would be surprising, however, since it is in accordance with just the aggressive policy he has been advocating. To kill an enemy, furthermore, is not necessarily, seen as culpable in lgbo society, though caution is sometimes advised. This, at least, is the strong impression left by the public reaction to the slaughter of a white stranger by the people of neighboring Abame. “Those men of Abame were fools”, says Uchendu (p. 127), not “those men were wrong”. The explicitly shameful nature of suicide also rules out the possibility that Okonkwo killed himself in order to retain his integrity, after the Roman manner. No possible sort of honour could grow from a course of action, which would result in his being launched into the bad bush to rot like his despised father Unoka. Okonkwo is a man far too careful of social acceptance for that. Individual life is much prized, except in instances of repulsive disease or some other monstrosity, in which cases the victim is cast into the bad bush. Okonkwo himself attains considerable recognition by his people for his perceived skills. His death certainly does not correspond to any preconceived notion of honour, so that for all