Things Fall Apart Character Analysis

People change all the time and from many different things. Looking at it people and events happening around them influence and dictate how someone can change.Sometimes a person will change to become someone or try and be nothing alike. In Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe, the invasion of the western missionaries caused many people and tribes across the country to change. One character that may not have changed drastically, but still enough to affect the story is Okonkwo. Okonkwo was what was seen as a great man of power and strength in their culture,becoming a person that many looked up to and adored with loving eyes.He was seen as strong, irrational, and a temper headed person in general.Once the invaders get there you see minor changes
Okonkwo’s rebellion against the white men was a strong need for things to go back to previous order. He was not used to being ordered around or having people believe in something other then the common religion. This new need to be able to bring back peace and order is another example of how Okonkwo needs to show his strength and power to overcompensate for his father. With the white men came his fear to be just another man in many or, even worse, a man that was considered a failure and an abomination to the people of his tribe, but rather a defiant leader who kept everything the same as it was. Okonkwo’s need for the tribe to stay the same as it was made him mad to the point where “in a flash [he] drew his machete” and m,ade a white “man’s head lay beside his uniformed body” showing with the tribes reactions to his death penalty of the man that “Umuofia would not go to war”(Achebe, 204-205). Okonkwo’s killing of the man had been proof that his influence from the Western people had not been good or direct, but rather make him a criminal in his own home. They made Okonkwo’s need to be strong man and not his downfall of being just like his father. He was a man that’s death is an abomination
Even though some people could interpret Okonkwo killing himself as “going against the man” and not conforming, I believe it was the weakest option he could have chosen.He proved to be as weak as his father. He chose to quit instead of standing for himself and what he wanted.The western invasion of the change making it bad instead of a good change, Okonkwo’s fear and need for strength and power enhanced with the trespassers arrival making him less like his usual self and influenced the book by making the punishments come and his death take over any reputation he had.This was seen in the way he reacted, his abuse of Nwoye for his joining the church and in his defiance of the white men. Okonkwo's biggest fear in the end happened and he had changed into his father. A weak