The Tragic Hero

Chinua Achebe repetitively characterizes Okonkwo as a Tragic Hero in a variety of ways throughout the text. By definition, a tragic hero is a character in a story that exhibits courage yet also is faced with a variety of adversities that will ultimately result in his/her downfall. Achebe follows Aristotle's characteristics to develop Okonkwo's character.

Okonkwo's hamartia is his fear laziness, which exhibit through his handwork achieve a powerful title in the Igbo society. When it is announced that Ikemefuna must he ignores his emotional attachment to the boy, and instead participates in his slaughter to fulfil his own pride, a demonstration of hubris. This event could also be considered Okonkwo's peripeteia, as it impacts the development of the story. Peripeteia is also evident later on in the text where Okonkwo is somewhat framed by his fate in an accident with a gun which kills a young boy during a funeral. This event leads to the exiled of Okonkwo and his family to Mbamba, his motherland. So when his home village of Umuofia is colonised by Europeans and the Igbo people do not resist, he commit suicides as he fears the feeling of powerlessness. 

Achebe's purposeful use of hamartia, hubris and peripeteia impact his targeted audience on a personal level. The mistakes and downfalls that Okonkwo experiences are also experienced by the reader to an extent. The reader is then taught to avoid the mistakes the hero makes and sadness is evoked when the hero experiences his/her downfall. As Achebe has explained in previous interviews, his choice to write literature about Nigerian culture is due to the lack of Nigerian literature, essentially humanising the international view of Nigeria. Evidently, Achebe intends to use the tragic hero as a method for the reader to humanise Okonkwo as a character.