Okonkwo's Mental Conflict

Up until a certain point, it would seem that Chinua Achebe’s novel, “Things Fall Apart”, describes the tale of its protagonist's heroic determination to achieve personal success and significance within the context of his community. Though Okonkwo initially appears to have been accomplishing his goals by earning respect for leading a life so strictly aligned with Umuofian doctrine, Achebe’s story actually serves to criticize the character’s dogmatic and imbalanced internalization of his tribe’s values. Okonkwo’s mental conflict is most clearly exposed when confronted with Ikemefuna’s impending death and the question of his involvement- a paradoxical challenge that is ultimately answered by fear rather than rational and moralistic thinking.
Oguefi Ezeudu, a respected elder who more fully embodied the spectrum of Umuofia’s beliefs, warned Okonkwo against killing his adoptive son: “‘That boy calls you father.
Do not bear a hand in his death’... ‘Yes, Umuofia has decided to kill him... But I want you to have nothing to do with it. He calls you father.’”(Achebe 57). After he and the other elders left, it became clear that Okonkwo spent time pondering and struggling with what had been said as he “sat still supporting his chin in his palms”(Achebe 57). On the one hand, his relationship with the boy had evolved into a strong paternal bond. On the other hand, the gods decreed that the boy must die--a decree that had to be obeyed without question. While Okonkwo’s choice was not yet directly revealed to the reader at that time, Achebe indicated through literary cues that the man’s mind was
set. When Okonkwo found the “strength” to overcome his feelings and notify the boy that he would soon be leaving, the novel’s narrative was shifted and instead focused on Ikemefuna’s point of view of as an outsider and victim.
By including how the boy “missed his mother and sister” yet “knew he was not going to see them”, Achebe made the circumstances appear cruel (Achebe 57). It was a tonal shift which indicated negativity surrounding Okonkwo's involvement in the sheer reality of the soon-to-be death, let alone his actual murder. The chronological placement of the scene was just as purposeful as it occurred immediately after the celebration of the coming of the locust, an occasion of joy, laughter, and excitement among the children of Umuofia. The fact that Okonkwo moments before had “sat in his obi crunching happily with Ikemefuna and Nwoye" contrasted and underscored the brutality and inhumanity of his premeditated actions (Achebe 56).
Just as the guardianship of the boy was a mark of his hard-won status and the highest point of his rise to power, the choice to participate in the execution of Ikemefuna was the beginning of Okonkwo's decline and initiated the series of catastrophes that end in his
death.
Although Ezeudu (and later Obierika) made it clear that the gods did not specifically order him to participate, Okonkwo saw this predicament as a challenge rather than an ethical dilemma, and therefore acted out of his pathological fear of being thought weak like his father. In spite of the character's strengths and achievements, he did reprehensible things as a result of his psychological flaws, which then mitigated his social recognition and status in the community.
After Ike’s murder, other key moments arise when he savagely beats his son and wives, shoots a boy, kills the messenger, and ultimately turns his own violent hand against himself. Perhaps if Okonkwo had learned to balance brutality with compassion, pride with humility, and had not struck the first deadly blow of many on Ikemefuna, “Things Fall Apart” could have been a very different story.