"Things Fall Apart" is a novel written by Chinua Achebe in 1958. This story portrays the tribal lifestyle of a man named Okonkwo, who is the typical strong male character, leader of his family and also of his tribe. This novel takes place in Niger, and it tells the tale of Umuofia, a set of nine villages where the main character of the story, Okonkwo lives. Okonkwo is portrayed in this story as the typical male character who is not only very strong, but also believes that men must always be strong, not weak, they must not be gentle or tender and they must always lead things with strictness and even sometimes brutality. And this is exactly the sort of characteristics that Okonkwo embodies. He is married to three women, is father of multiple children and at first is the epitome of what a man should be like. He becomes very rich and admired in his community. But an accident leads him and his family to exile and to face a change in lifestyle. He must, when he returns to his home, face the fact that neither he nor his people are the lords of their domain, but that not only must he accept a new religion, which his own son starts to follow, but also a new race.
Okonkwo´s characteristics of harshness, raw maleness, brutality, ambition, among other things, lead the character to first, loose his good standing in society when he ends up murdering someone and gets exiled. Second, his harshness with his family leads him to lose his son, who cannot stand to be like his father and prefers to betray his family. It also leads him to lose his material wealth as he must find a new life elsewhere. Finally, it leads him to lose his freedom and face the fact that things have changed, as he now depends on strange and foreign people to make choices and survive.