Things Fall Apart Quote Analysis

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“Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best”(Brainy Quotes). Power can be an dangerous quality to possess. When someone has power, they have to be very cautious with the way they use it. It has managed to bring down some of the greatest people and empires in a short amount of time. Looking back in history, whenever a leader has misused their power, their decline usually has an unfortunate ending. One thing will lead to another and soon the people of their civilization no longer support them. Although this may be hard for the leader to come to realization with ,it will catch up with them in the end. Corrupted power is something that will always have its place in society. The idea that people can not always keep their power forever is spread throughout the book Things Fall Apart. In the…show more content…
Once his exile was up and he returned to Umuofia, he had to start all over. He had to rebuild his huts and Okonkwo constantly thought about where he could have been if he had not been exiled (Achebe 162). When he returned to Umuofia, he wanted the villagers to go to war with the missionaries. The messengers arrived in Umuofia and Okonkwo killed one of them. Okonkwo knew that the people of Umuofia did not want to go to war with them “because they had let the other messengers escape” (Achebe 205). The once powerful and determined Okonkwo now had no reason to live because he did not possess the same power that he did before his exile. Since he had no reason to live, he killed himself. He did so by hanging himself from a tree. In this civilization, “it is an abomination for a man to take his own life” (Achebe 207). This quote shows how Okonkwo could not even bother having the missionaries kill him. He took his own life and now the people of Umuofia could not bury him because his body was evil. Thus, Okonkwo's death shows the end of his reign in the book Things Fall

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