Okonkwo, at the end of the book Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, has become the opposite of the strong-minded man he once strived to be. After his death he is looked upon as one who has defied the Gods and become a worthless being that is not even allowed to be laid to rest by his own people. How could a man so self-confidant and full of mental and physical strength be destroyed in moments? The root of the tragedy of his suicide is his own mind. The world that he had built up in his mind but could not have had crumbled, and he was caught in the rubble.
After Okonkwo returns from his seven year exile, he returns to the Ibo tribe without titles, the crowning of a man's achievements. Okonkwo, the reckless individual that he is, wants all the titles he can have. But after his return, he knew that " he had lost the years in which he might have taken the highest titles in the clan.(171)" After these titles are taken away from him, his life is almost without meaning, thus he fails to grasp what his purpose is in life. Because of the expectations he has for himself and his emotional need to exceed the accomplishments of his father, he has a void in his mind where the titles should be and has nothing else with which to fill that void. Although it may seem as if the titles were what caused his death, that is not true. The way the titles contribute to his suicide is that his mind has a need for them and expects them to be there. In a perfect world, or at least a world in which his bullet has not pierced the flesh of another tribe member, Okonkwo would be one of the most powerful men in the land. Because of a lack of titles and the wont of his mind for them, Okonkwo hangs himself.
Another mind game that causes Okonkwo to kill himself is his inability to control the tribe's religion. When he realizes that the missionaries are starting to take away part of his village, Okonkwo decides to fight them.
