The Importance Of Power In Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

In the book Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo is a successful farmer in his village that looks, and wants, to gain more power throughout the book, but it creates deep consequences for him. Throughout the book Heart of Darkness, Mr. Kurtz is a successful man whose life is consumed by the need to find ivory and the need to become successful. Society leads people to believe that in order to be happy, people need to be successful and powerful. Although the need for power captures people and make them do irrational actions. It leads people to want more power after they’ve gotten powerful. No one is to believe that they can gain too much power because society makes one believe that with power, life is better, so people seek to retrieve as much power as possible. In Things Fall Apart,
the main character, Okonkwo, gets exiled and he retreats to his mother’s land to live from for several years. He becomes truly prosperous there, but he is not satisfied, he believed that he “would’ve prospered even more” if he had been back in his homeland (Achebe 162). This explains that Okonkwo couldn’t be satisfied by his success if he knew he could have been even more back on his land. His desire for success had led him to hold high standards for the amount of success he wants. Okonkwo’s tribe has titles that men receive for their success and those with little success as womanly since women are seen as weaker and a disgrace to men. Okonkwo strived to “take the Idemili title, the third highest in the land” (Achebe 6). He wanted to be well-known throughout the village as a successful man. Okonkwo’s society has led him to strive for power so he wouldn’t be compared to women and looked down upon. Within Heart of Darkness, the society values ivory and with ivory you can become successful because of the wealth that comes with gaining it. The white men, throughout the book, are looking for ivory in the jungle to extract from the land and get as much as they could. One of the main characters, Mr.Kurtz was in charge of an important trading-post “in the true ivory-country, at ‘the very bottom of there. Sends in as much ivory as all the others put together” (Conrad 9). This shows just how much ivory Mr. Kurtz sold and just how he strived to be a successful, maybe even a powerful, person. It also explains how that society valued the work Mr. Kurtz put forth to produce all the ivory, by granting him higher ranks as his leadership and acquisition of ivory increased. The society in the book almost makes people feel like the only success they could have was being in ivory. Marlow explains that “The only real feeling was a desire to get appointed to a trading-post where ivory was to be had, so that they could earn percentages” (Conrad 10). This quote just goes to show that the society within this book made it’s people crave the need to get ivory to become successful, which would give people the sense that if they didn’t bring enough ivory to the table, then they would be a disappointment to the company. This evidence from Things Fall Apart and Heart of Darkness show how society has valued the work ethics of those who look to succeed more in life, making society members what to become even more prosperous, and how society has looked down on those who don’t. In order to gain power or to be successful, some people believe that they can use others to achieve that goal. In Heart of Darkness, Marlow is asking about Mr. Kurtz’s way to success in gaining all the ivory and he implies that Mr. Kurtz really just raided the land and got the tribe to follow him and help him (Conrad 26). This shows that Mr. Kurtz used the tribal people in order to gain the ivory that will make him far more successful. It explains the success can cause people to use others to get what they want, power, without giving back to others for their help. Mr. Kurtz just had to give his word in order for the natives to act on anything (Conrad 27). Mr. Kurtz plainly used these people just to use as helpers to find and extract the ivory for his own profit. The ivory didn’t help the natives, they just followed Mr. Kurtz because he had shown power over them.
Within Things Fall Apart, missionaries came into the Ibo people’s land to try to convert them to Christianity.
They told the people how their religion was wrong and that the only right religion was Christianity (Achebe 144-145). They didn’t bother caring what the Ibo people believed they just wanted to have more converts in their religion to make it more powerful. They had their minds set that the Ibo people’s gods could not be real since they were the more civilized, many even more powerful, people. Some Ibo people did not like the fact that these missionaries were trying to push their religion on them. To show that they still had power, some of the Ibo tribe members decided to burn down many of the Christian’s buildings, due to one of their own who transferred to Christianity committing a serious crime to the natives (Achebe 190-191). They looked to show that they still had power, even these missionaries had come in and preached their beliefs and influenced many Ibo people to switch to Christianity. The people used their power to do wrong against the men by burning down their buildings. Their need to show that they are still powerful possessed them, in a way, to do damage to others’
property.
Although the quest for success and power may negatively affect the society, it can also help. In Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo is working hard and using his power to help feed his family, giving them the life that they all deserve (Achebe 13-14). This shows that by being prosperous, an individual can better support their families in the economy and their community by spending their new found money on goods, especially name brand clothing, cars, restaurants, etc. Through being successful, a person can help the company they work for grow and be able to hire more workers, which would potentially make the business more flourishing. However, while individuals may become more profitable, others may become impoverish, creating a wider gap between the rich and poor people within a society. To conclude, being successful has its costs on the society. Although the trek to success can affect the society positively, it does do more harm. Okonkwo, from Things Fall Apart, proved that he was willing to do whatever he could to gain success and power through his actions because of what his society valued. Mr. Kurtz, in Heart of Darkness, showed how he was willing to use others in order to gain success and how society made people want to go out and get ivory for success.