Okonkwo's Death Essay

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The novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, tells the story of the unyielding Okonkwo, a man who refuses to change his beliefs and traditions despite his evolving clan, which ultimately leads to his downfall. Throughout the course of Okonkwo’s life, he goes through many tribulations that make him into the hard-headed man he is and led him to choose suicide. These include an improvident father, an exile from his clan, a rebellious son, evangelistic missionaries, and time in prison. There is no telling just exactly what made Okonkwo decide to commit suicide, especially considering it is one of the most frowned upon ways to die in their clan, but it was always highly obvious that Okonkwo was too inflexible to deal with the massive changes he experienced, which led him to his surprising life-ending decision. One of the first events that we see starting to change Okonkwo was the killing of Ikemefuna. This event occurred around the beginning of the story, and so far Okonkwo had only been portrayed as a completely insensitive person. Ikemefuna was a young boy sent to live in Umuofia and he lived in Okonkwo’s household for four years. Because Nwoye’s son did not live up to all of…show more content…
After the killing of the egwugwu and the burning down of the church, we see the slightly more positive side of Okonkwo re-appear again; “For the first time in many years Okonkwo had a feeling that was akin to happiness. The times which had altered so unaccountably during his exile seemed to be coming round again” (192). This positiveness is also short-lived once Okonkwo and the other leaders of Umuofia were tricked into going to a meeting with the District Commissioner, which turned into all of them being arrested and thrown into prison. During the time that the men spent in prison they were treated very
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