Chinua Achebe's, Things Fall Apart, is a story of an ambitious, determined man, Okonkwo trying to keep his culture alive while the Christian missionaries try to destroy it. Okonkwo works hard as a young man so that he will not end up as his father, Unoka, who had no titles and who was buried in the evil forest with nothing but the debt he owed. But Okonkwo pushes on and becomes an important man in his village. To his astonishment his oldest son Nwoye begins to show many of the same characteristics of Okonkwos father. The relationship between the two was not good and would eventually end in the two never speaking again. Okonkwo sees Unoka and Nwoye both as failures but Okonkwo himself is a failure from being exiled, to coming back to his land and not being able to make a difference, and then finally his final destruction. .
" Okonkwo's gun had exploded and a piece of iron pierced the boy's heart" (Achebe 124). The exile begins. It happened so quickly, without any thought. Okonkwo did not set out purposely to kill the boy but it happened. It was a crime against the earth goddess to kill a clansman and Okonkwo's only choice was to flee his village. His family and him would have to leave their home and go to a distant land to live for seven years. After the seven years are up then his family would be allowed to return to their village. Everything Okonkwo had worked hard to build was destroyed. His compound and his barns were burned and even his animals were killed. All of his titles were lost. He was nothing. .
All of the years of hard work and Okonkwo had nothing to show for it. Years of him swearing that he would never end up like his father and he was beginning to become more like him little by little. His father had died with no titles and now Okonkwo himself who held many prestigious titles before had none and was stuck in his motherland, Mbanta to start all over again. He had to build a compound for his family and himself and begin preparing the farm for the coming planting season.