Three Significant Parts of Things Fall Apart, and their Justifications

Three Significant Parts of Things Fall Apart, and their Justifications

Things Fall Apart is a Nigerian novel written by Chinua Achebe and focuses around the story of Nigeria becoming colonized by the British and losing its tradition and culture. Out of the main storyline, three parts that stood out the most to me was Okonkwo committing suicide by hanging himself, Okonkwo choosing to shoot Ikemefuna in the back during his surprise execution and Okonkwo being exiled to his motherland for 7 years due to killing a boy accidentally.

1. Okonkwo committing suicide
I chose this moment to be the most significant part of the novel because it truly captures the impact of different events on the protagonist, and portrays his tragic downfall due to his hamartia (which is his fear of weakness and failure). Throughout the story, Okonkwo is characterized to be a man obsessed with his public image, wanting to seem masculine and strong. He tries desperately to not be like his father, Unoka, who was care-free, indebted and lazy. His entire life has been dictated by him not wanting to appear weak and unsuccessful (similar to his father), and that has become his hamartia. His prideful and arrogant behavior which stemmed from his fear of appearing weak eventually lead to him committing the most shameful and degrading act his community regards, which is killing himself. Throughout the story, his arrogant and selfish behavior eventually lead people to lose respect in him. This final action easily portrays his tragic downfall and in a way, morally concludes the story of this character by portraying how an arrogant need to be strong and successful is never good. The ending is also very ironic to his character, which makes the viewer really think about his desperate obsession with not wanting to be weak.

2. Ikemefuna being killed by his father 
The second most influential scene from the novel was when Okonkwo joined the others in executing Ikemefuna. This stood out to me because it showed me to what extent Okonkwo would go just to maintain his reputation and public image as a macho, strong man. This again was ironic because while he did this action under fear of looking weak, in reality this was a very cowardly and weak move, and in no way proved him to be strong. Ikemefuna was starting to almost become Okonkwo's son, he even called Okonkwo 'father' and established trust and faith in him. An actual strong man would retaliate against the villagers when hearing that Ikemefuna had to be executed, because Ikemefuna was part of his life and had spent so much time together with him. However, he was conscious about what others would think of him if he didn't support the executing, and willingly committed the killing blow on Ikemefuna. The fact that this action made him remorseful and sad for the next few days shows that it wasn't the right choice to make and now he had to deal with the guilt.

3. Okonkwo being exiled to his motherland 
This was placed third on my list of significant scenes, not because it was of less importance, but because the other two scenes above showed heavy character development which can lead to a further discussion on morality, whereas this scene was important as it was a peripeteia moment; a reversal of fortunes and acted as the turning point in the story. After the accident where Okonkwo ends up killing a young boy with a gun, he is forced to exile back into his homeland for 7 years. This reversal of fortune was a turning point in the story because things were actually falling apart (alluding to the title of the story), and lead to him realizing that things will never go how he planned it out to be, and it can never be reversed. Okonkwo needed to realize that all this pride and ego was indeed bad because it was just leading him to his eventual doom. This event was the start of his downfall.