Chinua Achebe’s classic novel Things Fall Apart describes a critical juncture in Igbo society: the first point of contact with missionaries. Even prior to their arrival, the protagonist of the story, Okonkwo, contends with both personal and collective crises in his community. Okonkwo “was well known throughout the nine villages and beyond,” an introduction to a man whose power and prestige have become the cornerstones of his identity (Achebe, 1958,

They are rocked by a hand of fear, not motherly nurturance. They are obsessed by their fears, of becoming like his father in the case of Okonkwo and of not becoming like his father in Nwoye's instance. However, Nwyoe, because of the cultural and political shifts endured by his native land, has another framework of self-definition that his father lacks -- the availability of another culture, namely that of

Colonial Resistance in Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe was born in Ogidi, Nigeria, and his father was a teacher in a missionary school. His parents were devout evangelical Protestants and christened him Albert after Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, although they installed in him many of the values of their traditional Igbo culture. He attended University College in Ibadan, where he studied English, history and theology. At the university Achebe

Thus, the "ceremony of innocence" by which the boy was received into the tribe is now replaced with violence. Okonkwo, even though he loves the boy, kills him to avoid seeming weak. Yeats' slow-moving rough beast with a lion's body but the head of a man may seem to represent Okonkwo, at first, in Achebe's novel, given Okonkwo's violence towards other people in the novel. But while Okonkwo is certainly

"Would you like a white woman Wongee?" Jimmie asked. "Don't seem ter make their cow-cockies happy, having white woman for 'is wife. Why else he come after black girls? Must be sum'pin to white women we ain't been told" (p. 11). The implication drawn from Wongee is that aboriginal females are sexier than white women, but Jimmie is sexually attracted to the white woman. On page 12 Wongee describes an

This tragic flaw is very clearly apparent in Okonkwo, the protagonist of Achebe's Things Fall Apart. He is very strong and very masculine according to the expectations of his people, and this both helps him to win success amongst his people despite the shame of his family background -- his father was not well respected in the community -- and causes him to be banished from the villages. This banishment