There is a certain stillness before a great tree falls — an unspoken tension in the air, a trembling of roots. In Chinua Achebe’s ‘Things Fall Apart’ the tree that is Okonkwo stands tall and unbending, proudly against the winds of change, only to crack under the weight of his own convictions. Although the novel, published in 1958, is often viewed as a tragedy about the erasure of a culture through colonial disruption, it is just as much an autopsy of the internal fractures that made such erasure possible. Among these fractures, the brittle ideal of masculinity looms large. With that lens, we will discuss how Achebe portrays masculinity not as a confident identity, but as a defensive posture. How this traditional idea of masculinity is less of a stable ideal, and more of an anxious performance — one that imprisons individuals like Okonkwo and stifles both personal and communal growth.
Patriarchy, as depicted in Umuofia, is not simply a structure of power, but a house of expectations— where the walls close in on even the men within. Okonkwo’s quest to prove his masculinity begins at a young age, and already gives us an idea of how Achebe sees masculinity. This desire of proving himself is born in the shadow of his father – Unoka. “ In his day he was lazy and improvident and was quite incapable of thinking about tomorrow.” A debtor who was fond of music and drank his days away, Unoka didn’t fit Umofia’s idea of masculinity, and was dismissed by the clan as weak, laughed at for his gentle ways. Perhaps what threatened Umuofia most about him was not his poverty, but his refusal to perform masculinity in the way the village demands.
“Unoka was never happy when it came to wars.” Achebe does not need to embellish. The accusation is plain. In a society where manhood is measured in yams, wives, and valor, Unoka’s softness is not only shameful — it is dangerous. Okonkwo grew up unable to bear the image his father had. A man with no titles, called an Agbala — meaning woman — by Okonkwos playmates, he was a burden and a disappointment. At that young age, Okonkwo made it his goal to hate everything his father was, and be his own man. In doing so, he becomes a man so afraid of appearing weak, that all he allows himself to feel is strength.
Everything he does is shaped by this anxiety. It’s what motivates him to wrestle Amalinze the Cat and to beat his wife during the Week of Peace — not for anything she has done, but to assert that he can. Okonkwo’s manhood demands defiance rather than introspection. “His whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness.” Achebe does not hide the irony: a man ruled entirely by the thing he claims to loathe. Achebe once again shows masculinity not as confidence, but as avoidance. A wall between Okonkwo and everyone in his life, so high that no one can climb over it, yet built on such a fragile base. The clearest chink in this armour comes in the form of Ikemefuna, the boy left in Okonkwos care as a peace offering from another village. Over the three years, Okonkwo takes a liking to Ikemefuna, and more to the fact that the boy was more masculine than his own children. He treats Ikemefuna like a son, and Ikemefuna even calls him ‘father’. The bond between them grows quietly, tenderly. But tenderness is something Okonkwo has taught himself to fear.
Eventually, when the oracle instructs the elders to kill Ikemefuna, they advise Okonkwo not to take part in the act. It is necessary to listen to the oracle, but it is just as important that one doesn’t kill his own family, as that might upset the gods. Okonkwo knew not what he felt, but he could only see it as weakness. And to make sure that no one else sees him the same way, he struck down his son himself. Achebe gives us no heroic justification, no tragic grandeur. Only fear, and a child who trusted.
What Achebe leaves unspoken is as powerful as what he writes. Okonkwo’s violence is not an individual pathology but a communal inheritance. The society he lives in has no language for emotional vulnerability, no space for gentleness in men. Masculinity, in Umuofia, is singular: loud, forceful, unquestioning. Men gather in councils, take oaths, tell stories of war and conquest. Women, even when wise, remain at the margins. “No matter how prosperous a man was, if he was unable to rule his women and his children he was not really a man.” It is not enough to succeed — one must dominate. Achebe invites us to see that this is not power, but insecurity dressed in tradition. Achebe also acknowledges that neither masculinity nor tradition are that simple, that straightforward and rigid. There are other voices in the novel — softer, calmer — that offer different models. Obierika, Okonkwo’s friend, often questions the rigid codes of their society.
In contrast to his friend, Obierika speaks with reason, not impulse. He believes in the customs and traditions of the Igbo people as much as anyone else, but he thinks before he acts, and thinks with logic and morals at that too. He doesn’t join in the killing of Ikemefuna, not defying the oracle, but questioning the morality of the act, and the need for him to be involved. “Why should a man suffer so grievously for an offense he had committed inadvertently?” he asks, when Okonkwo is exiled. Obierika represents a masculinity that listens, that reflects — one Achebe presents not as weak, but as wise. The exile itself is a pivotal moment — not just plot-wise, but ideologically. When Okonkwo accidentally kills a clansman and is sent to his motherland, Mbanta, the narrative shifts.
It is no longer about building status in a hyper-masculine world, but about what remains when that world is taken away. The tone changes immediately as we step into Mbanta along with Okonkwo and his family. This is a land where the importance of maternal nurture is honoured. His uncle, Uchendu becomes a quiet contradiction to the ideals Okonkwo clings so strongly onto. Upon his arrival, Okonkwo is very quickly told by Uchendu,“It is true that a child belongs to its father. But when a father beats his child, it seeks sympathy in its mother’s hut.” This isn’t sentiment — it’s structure. The mother’s home, often dismissed by patriarchy as secondary, is revealed to be the true refuge when violence fails. And the contrast is striking. In Mbanta, performance doesn’t define manhood, endurance and respect do. Uchendu’s own stories about the tragedies faced by the people of Mbanta as he reminds Okonkwo that he is not the greatest sufferer in the world serve as symbols of a quiet strength and endurance a man must have. Achebe does not idealize this ‘feminine’ space, but he does suggest that it offers something Umuofia lacks: the capacity to grieve, to hold, to bend without breaking.
Okonkwo however spends his years in exile thinking toward his return to Umofia, redemption amongst his clansmen, and by this point, revenge against the white man. He thinks he has wasted. 7 years outside of his land, and yet the world he returns to has changed drastically. The first signs of colonial presence have begun, through churches rather than military invasion. The missionaries bring new ideas, which feel like a foreign language to the people of Umofia. Notably, the church appeals to the marginalized within Umofia and its concepts of masculinity, including women, the title-less, and outcasts like the osu. Not because it is alien, but because it provides a sense of belonging free from violence and the shackles of primitive tradition, something their own community never even acknowledged.
Here Achebe does not excuse colonialism at all, but complicates the narrative. The cracks in Umuofia were already there. The missionaries only slipped through. For Okonkwo, this is the ultimate insult — not only has his world changed, but others have welcomed the change. He calls them “women” for choosing peace, or even tolerance, over war and violence. He longs for action, for blood to be shed in order for his people to restore the old order. But his clan no longer follows. When he kills a colonial messenger in a last, desperate gesture to assert himself, no one joins him. And so, he hangs himself — a final act that is not resistance, but defeat. His masculinity did not fail, but a different masculinity succeeded. Suicide is taboo, an offense against the earth. And now, even in death, he is no longer a man by the standards of his own people. It feels inevitable, because the foundation of his identity is already splintering long before the white man arrives. Yet the bitter irony is unmistakable: in a society where taking one’s own life is considered abominable, Okonkwo dies a shameful death, alone and unmourned. A man who spends his entire life running away from the legacy his father left behind, dies a death of weakness, shame, and disgrace, the very notions he despised. His community that he found so much pride in, is no longer the same, and still it buries him as a stranger.
Achebe leaves us with an image not of glory but of irony: the white District Commissioner, who comes to retrieve his body, and is writing a book on the colonialization of the primitive land, decides to write about Okonkwo’s story in a brief paragraph — “perhaps not a whole chapter.” The life of a man consumed by masculinity and stature, told as an entertaining few lines by those who never understood its weight. But long before the Commissioner arrived, the tragedy was already complete. In his quest to prove his masculinity and hold onto the image he had created, he lost his family, his legacy, his community and his place within it, and ultimately, his life.
But that ending is not abrupt—it is a culmination. Okonkwo’s idea of masculinity is a clenched fist: strength, violence, control, and unyielding pride. Yet Achebe relentlessly questions these values by showing us the internal erosion they cause. Masculinity in ‘Things Fall Apart’ is not portrayed as a triumphant inheritance but as a burden—a story men tell themselves until they can no longer bear its weight. Okonkwo, throughout the novel, confuses fear for power, silence for authority, and brutality for love. When he strikes down Ikemefuna, a boy who calls him “father,” it is not out of duty, but out of dread—dread of appearing weak. “He was afraid of being thought weak,” Achebe tells us, in what is perhaps the most tragic line of the novel. That moment, while brief, echoes through the rest of the narrative. It is a moment when masculinity demands blood, and Okonkwo offers it, even as it chips away at his soul.
In the end, ‘Things Fall Apart’ is not just the story of a society crumbling under the pressure of colonialism, but that of a man crumbling under the pressure of expectations instilled onto him through society, traditions, and the patriarchal structure. Okonkwo is not however merely a product of these factors — he is the most devout disciple, the loudest enforcer, and the ultimate victim. Fear masquerading as pride shapes his life, and pride masquerading as power shapes his demise. His tale serves as a cautionary one not just about the perils of change, but about the brittleness of what we call strength. According to Achebe, masculinity is a mask that must never be removed, even though it suffocates the wearer. It is not a sanctuary. Okonkwo’s world may be distant, but his anxieties are not. They live on in the silences between fathers and sons, in the pressure to speak louder than one feels, to fight harder than one must, to never ask for help. Achebe leaves us with no easy answers—only the ache of a life unlived, and the echo of a man who could never forgive himself for being afraid.
By: Samarth Kochhar
Write and Win: Participate in Creative writing Contest & International Essay Contest and win fabulous prizes.
About the Author
