Viewing Achebe's Okonkwo Through 21st Century Lenses?

You cannot view Okonkwo’s actions through 21st century lenses. To do that will give you a biased view of the man.

1. “Things Fall Apart” was set in a period where traditional religion was mostly the norm and the colonisers were just coming in. Human sacrifices and listening to the gods were still a thing then and were acceptable.

2. Okonkwo wasn’t a murderer. He didn’t up and kill Ikemefuna on his own. It was duty.

Ikemefuna was used as a peace settlement after someone in a neighbouring village killed someone in Okonkwo’s village, Umuofia.

Okonkwo loved the boy and treated him like his own son and the feeling was mutual.

In fact, he loved the boy even more because he was bringing out the manliness in his own son, Nwoye, who had been showing traces of weakness.

Three years later, the Oracle decreed that Ikemefuna had to be killed to ensure a final peaceful resolution of the conflict between the two villages.

Okonkwo mulled it over for a long time before deciding that to reject it because of his love for the boy would be to show weakness and fail in his duty.

You cannot view Okonkwo's actions through 21st century lenses. To do that will give you a biased view of the man. In Okonkwo's time, strength was everything. Weakness was a taboo. Something to mock. You could tell how important strength was in that period with the way Achebe opened with Okonkwo's wrestling match with the then undefeated Amalinze the Cat.

Again, through 21st century lenses, you can say “men, it’s okay to cry,” “men, you don’t have to be strong all the time,” but we agreed that we cannot centre this in the 21st century. Willing to do what it took to show strength then is not the kind of thing you’d describe as “retrogressive mentality” using today’s lenses.

So, back to Ikemefuna. Okonkwo agreed to the killing of the boy but wanted to be the one to do it. Ogbuefi Ezeudu, the one that conveyed the Oracle’s ruling, advised him not to have a hand in it, and to let others do the killing.

“That boy calls you father. Do not bear a hand in his death.”

Okonkwo disregarded the advice, and when the day came to kill Ikemefuna, they told the boy that he was being returned to his village.

While he was initially scared, seeing Okonkwo following behind made him relax because he trusted that the man that had become like a father to him would not let anything happen to him. He even started singing about home.

When they got into the bush and the blows started landing, Ikemefuna turned to Okonkwo and shouted “My father, they have killed me,” expecting Okonkwo to intervene.

Instead, out of a sense of duty and to avoid being seen as weak, Okonkwo struck the final blow that killed Ikemefuna.

It wasn’t murder. Ikemefuna was already condemned to die, with or without Okonkwo joining. It was duty.

3. Okonkwo was actually 100% a culture custodian and it would be a great disservice to Achebe’s book to attempt to state otherwise, especially since the Brits are producing it.

The movie would be a betrayal of Achebe’s values if Okonkwo is painted as a villain.

After Ogbuefi Ezeudu died, Okonkwo mistakenly shot and killed Ezeudu’s son at the burial ceremony. This was considered a “female” crime. Mistakenly killing someone was a taboo and they had to banish him and his family for 7 years and burn down his house and everything to appease the gods.

When he came back after 7 years, the colonisers had entered Umuofia and the villagers were now docile.

One day, an overzealous Christian convert, Enoch, decided to unmask a masquerade. This annoyed Okonkwo and he rallied the villagers to burn down the newly-built church in retaliation.

The colonisers’ District Commissioner tricked Okonkwo and the other elders of the village to a peace meeting where they were arrested and locked up.

After their release, Okonkwo rallied the village to take up arms and resist the colonisers.

In the meeting where the elders were discussing what to do about the colonisers, the District Commissioner again sent a messenger to disperse them. This annoyed Okonkwo and he killed the messenger in a final act to rally the village to take action and stand against the colonisers. Instead, they were afraid of the colonisers and abandoned him.

Seeing that his people would not fight back and knowing what was coming, rather than wait for the colonisers to hang him, Okonkwo went home and hung himself.

It was an act of defiance. That of a man that would rather die than live as a slave.

While suicide was an abomination in Igbo culture, his actions weren’t abominable. His reasons weren’t abominable. We’ve read the story of the Nigerians that chose to jump and sink in the ocean rather than be sold into slavery. To consider his suicide abominable would be to consider theirs abominable even though their actions were that of defiance.

Okonkwo was a culture custodian. He was the last lone voice - or machete - that stood between the Igbo way of life and tradition, and the colonisers'. Things Fall Apart wasn't about a villain with "retrogressive mentality." It was about a man that chose duty over love.

4. The final question you should ask yourself is this: what do you think Achebe’s goal was when he wrote a book about a central character that kicked against the activities of the colonisers and then took his own life? Do you think he wrote a tragedy for tragedy’s sake, or that it was a social commentary?

You think that in line with other books he wrote, he wanted to communicate the futility of standing against the Brits, or through his writing, show someone that stood, and defiantly clocked out rather than live a subjugated life?

It was about a man that tried to stop colonisers from disrespecting his own religion and culture while establishing their own. It was about a man that was disenfranchised by the fear his people displayed that allowed colonisers to overrun their village and subsequently, other villages, towns, cities, and the country.

5. We’ve all watched historical foreign-made movies and TV shows whose beloved characters carried out actual killings, sacrifices and all, and they were loved and cheered on.

A white character can kill 2 million people and in a show about their life, through research, you would still be able to see the internal conflict and even be able to think “oh, maybe this is why.” But with African characters, a character is either good or bad. No in-betweens. No situation of actions within the right context. No research.

The "Things Fall Apart" movie would not necessarily fail if Idris Elba fails to pronounce an Igbo word well, but it would have truly failed if Okonkwo is presented as an outright villain. That would be telling a story outside of the context and world in which it happened. And that would be a crying shame.