A brief scene from Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and a discussion pertaining to its overall significance to the novel.

March 2019

I will address what I believe to be the most significant scene of the novel, the final chapter of scene 3, where Okonkwo’s suicide takes place. I argue this as the most significant to the piece’s motif and find it as the moment where the depression of Okonkwo is finally highlighted in its most ultimate form. His suicide is presented in a very brash matter, as an unexpected ending to the novel. Initially he is presented as a strong, powerful warrior in his clan, and a man who has gained the respect of his peers despite his family past.

Okonkwo’s depression may stem from his early childhood where he was raised by an untitled father in the clan, known as an alcoholic and leaving behind him many debts. Okonkwo fought all signs of similarity to his father and grew to become a prominent farmer, and father many children.

This also is the possible second source of Okonkwo’s depression, his lack of a worthy son to continue his proud legacy that he had been working so hard to build. He had numerous daughters and sons but Okonkwo’s particular daughter, Ezinma, was very similar to himself and he was very close to her. In the novel, Okonkwo’s tender heartedness is highlighted when Ezinma is ill and then taken by the clan’s priestess, Chielo, to the caves of their ancestral god, Agbala. He follows his nervous wife Ekwefi, against clan customs, to the cave to check on her and the child and this shows a great love for the child on Okonkwo’s part. Okonkwo is constantly wishing she is a boy and even directly states it in the text on page 172 in the statement, “He never stopped regretting that Ezinma was a girl. Of all his children she alone understood his every mood.”

The final source of depression for Okonkwo, and the trigger for his suicide is, in my opinion, the clan’s overall change in culture from previous generations where tradition demanded great dignity and honor and held high esteems in the clan’s overall ability to fight rather than adapt and survive. His support of this claim can be found in his personal commitment to the clan’s former ways in the statement on page 199, “If Umuofia decided on war, all would be well. But if they chose to be cowards he would go out and avenge himself.” Five clan heads along with Okonkwo were detained following the destruction of an early Catholic church, that, in the eye of the clan, was stealing it’s members and threatening it’s tradition as well. While detained, court messengers abused, beat and shaved the heads of the clan heads, including whipping Okonkwo’s back.

The dishonor on the part of the court messenger fueled Okonkwo’s final rage. Following their release, a gathering was held to address this never before seen disrespect on part of the White men. At the gathering, the sudden appearance of the messenger came to scene, and Okonkwo immediately beheaded the man whom he had sworn vengeance on. I believe Okonkwo knew in the words of his surrounding peers following his actions, questioning his murdering of the messenger, that this was a new time where the clan no matter what would choose safety and survival over customs and rituals. This clearly was not a world the proud warrior believed in and in turn resulted in his resorting to suicide.

Especially because of his grand status and perceived high esteem and toughness as a wrestler, this new society of weakness and indignity that he could not escape whilst it made him feel so helpless and he often compared it’s new morals to “woman-like”. His suicide truly shows how strongly he believed in the past ways of life and how significant the destruction of these traditional customs were.

This makes the reader question the pacification of the South American indigenous people, and sheds light on the forced juncture of church then followed by state or government on a group, that originally was only concerned with its own dedication to the preservation of prior, customary and traditional, ways of life.

Achebe, Chinua, and Anthony Appiah. The African Trilogy: Things Fall Apart. Penguin Books, an Imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2017.