e was unable to maintain a particularfaith, and he takes the easiest way out, the way of the coward. Okonkwo killedhimself because he refused to change and take in both experiences. He is theone who hung himself, not the society. (Serumaga 76) On the surface it wouldseem that Okonkwo was driven by success, however, it is my opinion that Okonkwowas driven by fear, fear of becoming like his father, and in that absolute fearhe made it happen. Okonkwo's society will continue to exist, in fact it existstoday, but not in the shape that Okonkwo would recognize. This is the tragedythat Achebe wrote about and is summed up perfectly in the last lines of the bookwhen an entire culture, all of its oral traditions, customs, ceremonies, lives,the very essence of the Ibo people merited a "reasonable paragraph" in thewhite man's book, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger. BIBLIOGRAPHY1. Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann Educational Publishers, 1986.2. Aristotle. Aristotle: The Poetics. "The Longinus: On the Sublime." Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1960.3. Ravenscroft, A. Chinua Achebe. Great Britain: Longmans, Green & CO LTD, 1969.4. Serumaga, Robert. "A Mirror of Integration." Protest and Conflict in AfricanLiterature (1969) 765. Taiwo, Oladele. Culture and the Nigerian Novel. New York: St. Martin's Press,1976. ...
