Okonkwo as a Sympathetic Protagonist in Things Fall Apart
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Okonkwo as a sympathetic protagonist in Things Fall Apart
“Okonkwo’s machete descended twice and the man’s head lay beside his uniformed body” (146). Okonkwo, the son of the effeminate and lazy Unoka, strives to make his way in a world that seems to value manliness. In so doing, he rejects everything for which he believes his father stood. Unoka was idle, poor, profligate, cowardly, gentle, and interested in music and conversation. Okonkwo consciously adopts opposite ideals and becomes productive, wealthy, thrifty, brave, violent, and adamantly opposed to music and anything else that he perceives to be “soft,” such as conversation and emotion. He is gruff, at times, and usually unable to express his feelings, but his emotions and motivations are quite complex. Despite his overall image as a violent brute, Achebe shows Okonkwo as a tender, worried father and a hard worker, who had “cracked [his palm-kernels] himself” (19).
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