Things Fall Apart Is

Things Fall Apart is set in the 1890s, during the coming of the "white man" to Nigeria. The novel portrays the clash between the white's colonial government and the traditional culture of the Igbo people. The novel is about a very strong man's rise to great prestige, fortune and power which in the end were overshadowed by his inevitable death. Okonkwo's demise was not because of colonization, but rather his downfall was attributed by his obsession with masculinity. Okonkwo's one and only weakness, his fear of becoming a failure like his father, drove Okonkwo to embrace the values of manliness, because for all of his desire to be strong, he was haunted by fear. This fear drove him to rashness, and in the end contributed to his death. Another one of Okonkwo's weaknesses was portrayed through the way he defined masculinity so narrowly. Okonkwo was apart of a patriarchal society and the male gender was already established with great authority. For Okonkwo, however, any kind of softness and tenderness was a sign of weakness. Throughout the novel we are shown men with a more mature understanding of masculinity but Okonkwo's ignorance often disallowed him to think thoroughly of his actions. At other times, however, Okonkwo's masculinity was all he had and was the primary factor that controlled his actions. He was often consumed in his actions by his unlimited boundaries of masculinity. Furthermore, a detrimental flaw was his unwilling behaviour to accept change in tradition. He was not able to adapt to the clashing values of both societies and the changing ways around him. He could not accept the fact that in a colonized society he would be an average person, rather than a distinguished and powerful male.

Okonkwo, son of Unoka, one of the strongest and most respected men of his society, feared of becoming an exact image of his father; therefore, embodying the values of manliness, he took on his own approach to life and