Things Fall Apart- Alienation

George Rodriguez
Mr.Corradino
A.P. Literature
12-FEB-2013
Things Fall Apart Feeling unwanted is a universal human experience. It makes for a great theme for literature since it can reach a broad spectrum of people. Alienation is a terrible experience for people. They lose their since of belonging in doing so they lose their identity that they have built up and become lost in a place that was once their home. Although alienation is a traumatic experience for anyone to go though, it also provides an enriching experience for the reader to learn from. In Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe the main character Okonkwo becomes alienated from the village because his own people have ostracized him. This experience that Okonkwo illuminates the work as whole as it serves to provide a lesson to the reader.
Okonkwo becomes exiled from the world that he has grown up in. The good name he has built up his entire lifetime following the rules of his society has become a thing of the past. He must start over again to make up for the loss of his immense dignity. Feeling nothing but out of place Okonkwo decides to leave his old village in the hopes of being able to belong somewhere again. He seeks comfort from Obierika; however, it provides little comfort. The loss of Okonkwo’s son, Nwoye the missionaries disheartens him. He lost his future generation to something that had caused him to become ostracized. Okonkwo comes back to the tribe but still furthers the feeling of loneliness as the tribe has been changed by the white man. His returning should have been announced with great pride to return of such a great warrior as Okonkwo. Instead he becomes completely lost with who he is in a society. The loss of Identity is complemented by the death of Okonkwo in that they both no longer matter in the tribe that has been changed by the white man. The enriching element of the story would is to show the reader just how traumatizing, ostracizing someone can lead to the death of a person. It also shows just how someone feels out of place even in in the area that they grew up in. Okonkwo goes through in the story staying the same while everybody around him changes to something that is unrecognizable to him. His suicide can reflect to that of teenagers going transitioning to adolescence where someone is out of please seeing everybody around them change into someone unrecognizable to the person they grew up with. This person might feel left out with nothing to relate their once best friends. As a result of this alienation from the world they once knew, some teenagers fall victim to taking their own lives.
This illuminating experience adds to the work because it is rarely talked or written about. Ostracizing someone is in a way a form of bullying someone for not following the norms of the society they live in. Most people refer to this as peer pressure to conform to fit in with others and be part of something. It allows the reader to realize that making someone feel out of place could condemn them. It reflects on how we often make others fit in to the norms we want them to, what they look like, what they wear, what they listen to, what they eat. It’s suggested we should be allowed to live how we want to without enforcing our culture to others.
Okonkwo’s exile in Things Fall Apart is a crucial part of the story that provides one of the major themes in the story. Alienation, Ostracizing also reveling the work in the story.