Intersection of Okonkwo's Tragic Fate and Communal Fate in Achebe's Things Fall Apart

Abstract

Every discourse of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart aiming to view the tragic dimension of it will never be complete without the reference to the idea of man’s feeble struggle against superior forces that have resolved firmly to incapacitate him to the point of death or near death situation. Very few to none of these readings have attempted to trace how Okonkwo’s errors intersect with Umuofia’s negligence over serious issues bothering on the maintenance of the metaphysical order, an intersection of two different tragic situations that have generated a situation far too great for Okonkwo to handle. It is this issue that this reading sets out to examine. This study deploys Louis Rosenblatt’s Transactional Reader-Response theory and tragedy as critical frameworks to achieve its aim and objectives. This study locates the hand of Okonkwo’s chi in his tragic journey/fall. It is premised on the assumption that this chi on a higher level of abstraction doubles as Okonkwo’s tragic fate, and that it is this same phenomenon that leads Okonkwo into actions that place him in stiff opposition against the potent forces that ruin him. It is also in that sense that the folktale is torch lighted as a formative pool of wisdom, which Okonkwo disdains and abhors greatly.