In Things Fall Apart written by Chinua Achebe, he uses Okonkwo to serve as a main

character in order to discusses a contradiction between his emotions and actions to emphasizes

on how he deals with his problems. At the beginning of the story, Okonkwo’s a person living in

Umuofia Village who doesn’t want to shows his weak side because his ego is very high. The

setting of the story is pinpointed in Nigeria during the late 19th century. In the story, Okonkwo is

characterized to be a rich man and stays with his father. Unoka is father of Okonkwo who is a

careless person in terms of family. According to that, Okonkwo yearns for not to be like his

father, hence, in order for him to become a leader and to be able to in charge of a family he

needed to work hard and very powerful. As he became successful in his life, his own fear of

being vigorous pushes him to act different to his own feelings. The first example was shown in

page.26, paragraph 2, line 5-6 states that “Okonkwo said he was sorry for what he had said ,

and the meeting continued.” This statement can convey to the readers that he doesn’t really feel

sorry for what he have done which killing a man spirit. On the other hand, opposite to his action,

he did say sorry as he want the meeting to continue and he doesn’t want to stop it. Thus, his

expression when utter apologise doesn’t fully explicit, to be more precise he doesn’t want to

illustrates this defect to other people that were in the meeting. The next evidence is in page.31,

line 1-3 had mentioned that “he was repentant. But he was not the man to go about telling his

neighbours that he was in error.” This basically means that he regret from what he had done to

his wife. As he is a person who is having a high-self esteem, so he doesn’t want anyone to know

his bad side that he done to his young wife. Nonetheless, the interconnection between

Okonkwo’s behavior and a word

“ assertive”, because of his confident, it makes him strongly have high self-confident that

whatever he did is right, so this word is just to clarify his nature towards other people. To

conclude, there are several factors that can affected Okonkwo reactions toward both his family

especially his lover and people around him, but experiences that he face with his parent could be
the major impact to him. Although, his personality that shown up in this character is very unique

which makes him really stand out. To be say, If Okonkwo’s emotions indicate to his actions,

then there might be a shift between the relationship of his neighbors into a positive outcomes.