A tragic hero is a term that describes a character who displays certain characteristics which affect their future significantly. In Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe, Okonkwo’s fate as a tragic hero to an extent is greatly true as he portrays hamartia, a fatal flaw, and hubris, excessive pride. Even though the author describes Okonkwo as a hardworking, African farmer, it contradicts his rash decisions following numerous events. Therefore, Okonkwo’s tragedy is true as his fear of weakness and excessive pride lead him to his downfall. Even though Achebe sets Okonkwo to his downfall, it is evident that Okonkwo is a great hero despite his rash behavior and temper. Generally, a tragic hero is born into royalty and has already attained the noble status. However, Okonkwo was born into a poor family, and according to Okonkwo his father was “weak and feminine”. Regardless his father’s failures Okonkwo acquires respect in the Igbo society by defeating a great wrestler: As a young man of eighteen he had brought honor to his village by throwing Amalinze the Cat. (1) Okonkwo furthermore spends his hours toiling away in an attempt to earn his way up in the patriarchal society. Eventually, after numerous hardships, Okonkwo earns his success and obtains several barns and wives. This symbolizes wealth and power which were what Okonkwo had been working for all his life. Moreover, Achebe portrays Okonkwo as a fierce warrior and is also represents him as a model clansman in the society:
A tragic hero is a person who is a great and respected person but is destined for tragedy. He is admired by others and is a prominent member of the community. However, he has a flaw extreme hubris, or being too proud. Overall, a tragic hero is a good person who experiences a tragic fall from his status in the community from a bad decision that is rooted in his pride. John Proctor was a tragic hero in Arthur Miller’s classic drama The Crucible.
A tragic hero is said to be someone with a fatal flaw that leads to their downfall. To be considered a tragic hero you have to meet four characteristics. The first characteristic is goodness; the character must show that they are a moral or ethical person. The second characteristic is that the character must have some form of superiority.
“ And so so at a very early age when he was striving desperately to build a barn through share-cropping Okonkwo was also fending for his father 's house¨(Achebe Pg. #22). Okonkwo provided and supported
As highly regarded and elevated members of their community, their rise to power is short lived as they lose their legacy as respected men in their lands. They are united by kingship, and are driven to their tragic end by forces within and outside of their control. Okonkwo is responsible for the disasters that come to him and his tribe, while divine forces conspired against Oedipus, who must accept the brutal truth of his life and his role within it. Okonkwo and Oedipus are doomed heroes, as facets of their character, such as their social status, imperfections, and self-righteousness, play a huge role in how much these men can determine their own disastrous fate. A tragic hero, by short definition, is someone who falls because of a tragic flaw and not because they are evil or a bad person.
As defined by Aristotle, a tragic hero is one who is not entirely good or evil. They are an individual who experiences a “reversal of fortune through a fault of character or an uncontrollable accident” (Boucquey). He or she undergoes a dramatic change from happiness to misery (Boucqyey). In Sophocles’ Antigone, Creon is the tragic hero. According to Aristotle, a tragic hero should contain four traits: goodness, appropriateness, lifelike, and consistency, which Creon most prominently displays.
Among those of the same culture, individuals who are adaptive and open-minded can be successful when there is cultural collision. When the Igbo and European cultures collide, Okonkwo gradually spirals out of control, losing everything he values and his own sense of self. From the beginning of the novel, Achebe depicts Okonkwo as a virile warrior and a successful farmer within the Igbo tribe. Reacting with violence to anything he considers “womanly” or “weak”, “He was a man of action and man of war” (10). Because of his reputation as a warrior he is highly respected by his community.
What is a tragic hero? A tragic hero a person of high rank or quality that suffers a downfall as a result of his or her tragic flaw. These main characters Robert Peace( The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace- Hobbs) , Macbeth ( Shakespeare) and Okonkwo ( Chinua Achebe) were the tragic heros in their own story. Each character started off doing simple task then evolved into doing things that were much bigger that came with a consequence along the way. These men built character amongst themselves once they had to come face to face with their own internal conflict and to reality.
For Okonkwo, being truly successful means becoming a better man than his father. Throughout Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo is afraid that he will become like his father, who was both lazy and cowardly. Okonkwo, determined to emerge from his father’s shadow, lives his life in order to gain the respect of the other villagers. As a young man, he defeats Amalinze, a great wrestler who had gone undefeated for seven years (Achebe 1). As he grows older, he becomes a wealthy farmer, with two barns full of yams (Achebe 8).
In “Things Fall Apart” Achebe gives background information on Okonkwo saying “He was a wealthy farmer and had two barns full of yams, and had just married his third wife.” (5). This quotation from chapter one demonstrates that Okonkwo’s nobility of prosperity is revealed by his success’ from his early years and forward. The villagers within Okonkwo’s clan love and honor him for his personal achievements, and he
(Butcher, 2000). It is due to his hubris or hamartia , he commits a crime. He then undergoes through pain and suffering and learns a fundamental truth of life. In short , tragic hero is a person who makes error in his jugdement which leads to downfall of himself in end (Aristotle,n.a) and ends usually with death of protagonist with evocation of pity and fear among the reader. However, Okonkwo does have few traits of tragic hero.
From being nothing in his village he rises to be a great, honorable, successful leader of umuofia. He also has a tragic flaw of being weak, failure and having fear that leads him to fail at things several times because of his fears. All of these failures then lead him to his suicide. Finally, he finds his own tragic fate because of his murder of the missionaries court messenger during his villages meeting. Though Okonkwo's life started out as one of the most successful and leading men of Umuofia but because of his violent and impulsive characteristics, even the most successful and well-respected man can fall from his
The tragic flaws of the two cause their demise. Okonkwo as well as Macbeth can be identified as tragic heroes due to both men suffering from tragic flaws; however, their similarity of being tragic heroes diverge due to both men having different motivational factors that were instilled by their experiences. In both instances the external environment along with the personalities of the characters formed their tragic flaws. Okonkwo’s tragic flaw was created because he did not want to become anything similar to his father.
Okonkwo In literature, there are many characters that stand out and show that they have a variety of qualities about them. In Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo is one character that presents character traits from both the negative and positive sides of him. Okonkwo is portrayed to be a warrior who wanted to become somebody strong and looked up to, but also possesses less favorable qualities. He, however, does not let any one trait dictate his whole personality; he is written to be a well-rounded character.
He was a caring man down in his heart but “his whole life was dominated by the fear, the fear of failure and of weakness” (Achebe 13), and his mission to become one of the greatest men of his clan. Okonkwo was devoted to masculinity, he put it above anything else preventing anyone from questioning his masculinity. When he felt a slight sign of weakness it reminded him of his fathers failure to being a true man not providing for his family or ruling women and his children, therefore “he was not really a man” (Achebe 53).There were many traits to being a masculine man but to Okonkwo the main one was ruling his wife and children, if any of them had disobeyed him he would beat them without hesitation or regret. Although Okonkwo is influenced by masculinity it is because the Ibo culture believes in men dominating women which leads their society to fall
Chinua Achebe’s 1958 literary classic, Things Fall Apart (Achebe, 1958), is renowned for its authentic account of the black African experience. Set in post-colonial Nigeria, the fictional novel discusses the cultural roots of the Igbos and follows the life of the tragic hero, Okonkwo. This acclaimed novel deals with strong patriarchal ideals of masculinity within the Igbo culture and how Okonkwo is a direct manifestation of this. Achebe depicts the relationship between masculinity and both male and female characters, and how this, in turn, has an effect on Okonkwo’s relationships. The strongest relationship in the novel is between father (Okonkwo) and daughter (Ezinma); their bond is strong because Ezinma is everything Okonkwo would want in a son.