Achebe’s novel, Things Fall Apart, was set in present day Nigeria before European Christian colonization. The novel took place in a very masculine and patriarchal village named Umuofia. Umuofia was seen as a powerful village because, unlike other nearby villages, they yet to face the threat of colonization. The novel’s main character, Okonkwo, is seen as a respective and wealthy warrior throughout his village. In this masculine society, men who do not live up to the society’s strict regulations are humiliated by being considered feminine. The village maintains strict regulations that the people are expected to follow. The individual’s consequences for not abiding by the regulations led to humiliation and isolation from their village.
Because of his father’s shortcomings, Okonkwo did his best to prove that he was masculine and powerful to his fellow village members. As part of his masculine display, he has three wives and many children, which he would beat regularly. Throughout the novel, he committed many crimes; one in particular cost him to be in exile for seven years. During a funeral ceremony, he accidently killed the dead man’s son. As part of the village’s regulations and the consequence for the murder, he had to go live in his mother’s home village for seven years. He did not enjoy his years in exile because such an exile was considered to be a form of removing Okonkwo’s masculinity and prestige in his home village. During his exile, Okonkwo’s village was presented with the threat of colonization and religious takeover. After seven years had passed, Okonkwo returned to his home village with the promise to express his masculinity and regain his prestigious status from his fellow men by leading his village to fight against the colonists. His plan backfired when he returned to Umuofia because his village did not want to fight the colonists, which was against Okonkwo’s traditional beliefs. This led him to kill himself instead of surrendering to his village’s regulations and his masculine.
The novel’s main character is a good example of how fatalism can lead an individual of a society to feel hopeless and ultimately commit suicide. Acevedo states that fatalistic suicides occur when individual experience strong pressure that causes them to feel hopeless and suicidal (Acevedo 77). This concept of fatalism can be used to explain the main character in Things Fall Apart choice to commit suicide. Okonkwo’s determination to be successful and follow the regulations set to him by his village caused him to self-destruct when others did not agree with him. Due to the regulations set upon him by his society, there was not much he could other than accept the things he could not change. The lack of his free will led to his unfortunate fate. Okonkwo was stubborn and believed that his only way out of the regulations enforce on him was through self-destruction, which lead him to kill himself; although suicide was seen as a form of alimentation in his culture. Acevedo’s ideas of fatalism are highly expressed in this character’s actions. The character felt alienated and constricted by his society’s regulations that he chose to set himself apart for the society in a drastic way.
Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. London: Heinemann, 1958. Print.