TFA - Key Moment Ranking

Moment #1: Intro to Okonkwo’s fear of failing and being a failure like his father

  The first important moment that I have chosen from Things Fall Apart is the scene in Chapter Two when the novel describes Okonkwo’s true fears and how his whole life revolved around them. As said in the novel, “[Okonkwo’s] whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness. . . It was not external but lay deep within himself. It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father. Even as a little boy he had resented his father’s failure and weakness, and even now he still remembered how he had suffered when a playmate had told him that his father was agbala.” It is from this scene that we are given insight into what Okonkwo’s character is: proud, stubborn and fixated on his image. From this cemented characterization of Okonkwo, we are able to understand the beginnings of his inner conflicts of aiming to be unlike his father in every aspect, even as to go so far as to aim to never fail in his life in any task, from as big as planting a field to one of his matches.

Moment #2: Okonkwo killing Ikemefuna and afterwards

  This second important moment that I have chosen is when Okonkwo, after being told for his own good to not come with the village men to kill Ikemefuna, came and gave the killing blow to Ikemefuna after, as stated in the novel, “He heard Ikemefuna cry, 'My father, they have killed me!' as he ran towards him. Dazed with fear, Okonkwo drew his matchet and cut him down. He was afraid of being thought weak.” This moment was important as it further emphasized Okonkwo’s character of fearing the image of being weak and showing how much he would sacrifice to keep his strong and successful image. Even to go so far as to give the killing blow to the child he raised and had called and thought of him as a father. This connects to the context as well of how some of the rituals performed by the Igbo villages were brutal and sometimes barbaric as innocents and bystanders were placed in harm’s way to appease the gods and goddesses that they worshiped and listened to.

Moment #3: When Okonkwo killed the head messenger and realized that the tribe would not fight the white men

  The third important moment that I have chosen in Things Fall Apart is when Okonkwo killed the head messenger where, as stated in the novel, “'The white men whose power you know too well has ordered this meeting to stop.' [said the head messenger.] In a flash Okonkwo drew his machet. The messenger crouched low to avoid the blow. It was useless. Okonkwo's machet descended twice and the man's head lay beside his uniformed body . . . Okonkwo stood lookingat the dead man. He knew that Umuofia would not go to war. He knew because they had let the other messengers escape." This moment shows the conclusion to both the external and internal conflicts that Okonkwo is subject to. The external struggles of fighting to keep out the white men and their beliefs and rules from the Igbo culture and villages make Okonkwo violent in nature and give context of how the village people of the lands that now create Nigeria were once hesitant and, at some times, violent and enraged by the idea of being forced into the law and belief system of the outsiders, otherwise known as the British. The internal struggles can also connect to this context as many of the people who were part of the revolution had to be able to find balance in their minds and hearts to see how to truly free themselves from the British rule, abandoning the idea of keeping the separate villages, which was a great sacrifice to their individual cultures, and instead moving to creating an independent country of Nigeria. By Okonkwo killing himself, we are able to see the novel’s theme of how, alike the title reads, ‘Things Fall Apart’ or, things don’t last forever. In this case, the brutal and somewhat backwards law and belief system of the Igbo villages is what could not last forever as, with everything from cultures to countries to technology to ideas, things never stay the same and are always changing. With Okonkwo killing himself, we are able to fully view the process of change from a man that once despised those who failed or lacked the effort to not fail to someone who committed the worst crime and had chosen to not put the effort to not fail. From this drastic change, we are able to be given an image that represents the theme wholly.