Okonkwo in Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe In the novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, Okonkwo is a tragic hero. Aristotle's Poetics defines a Tragic Hero as a good man of high status who displays a tragic flaw (“hamartia”) and experiences a dramatic reversal (“peripeteia”), as well as an intense moment of recognition (“anagnorisis”). Okonkwo is a leader and hardworking member of the Igbo community of Umuofia, whose tragic flaw is his great fear of weakness and failure. Okonkwo's fall from grace in the Igbo community and eventual suicide make Okonkwo a tragic hero according to Aristotle's definition. Okonkwo is “a man of action, a man of war” (7) and a high-ranking member in the Igbo village. He holds the prominent position of a member of the village clan because he has "shown incredible prowess in two intertribal wars" (5). Okonkwo's hard work had made him a “wealthy farmer” (5) and a recognized individual among the nine villages of Umuofia and beyond. Okonkwo's tragic flaw is not that he was afraid of work, but rather the fear of weakness and failure that comes from the unproductive life and shameful death of his father, Unoka. “Perhaps in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and weakness... It was not external but lay deep within him. It was fear of himself, for fear of finding himself resembling his father. Okonkwo's father was a lazy, carefree man who had a reputation for being "poor and his wife and children barely had enough to eat...they swore never to lend him money again because he would never pay it back." (5) Unoka had never taught Okonkwo what was right and wrong, and as a result Okonkwo had to interpret how to be a "good man". Okonkwo's self-interpretation leads him to conclude that a "good man" was someone who was the exact opposite of his father and therefore everything his father did was weak and useless. Okonkwo's fear leads him to treat members of his family harshly, especially his son, Nwoye. Okonkwo often wonders how he, a man of great strength and work ethic, could have a son who was "degenerate and effeminate" (133). Okonkwo thought that: "No matter how prosperous a man was, if he was unable to govern his women and his children (and above all his women) he was not truly a man"." (45).