Achebe helps the reader to understand Ginkgo’s egocentric and patriarchal personality hat leads him to his last roundup. Not until discovering Ginkgo’s fear of weakness, detachedness, and finally his narcissistic way of life will the reader be able to comprehend why Things Fall Apart is a tragedy.
It is evident in nearly every aspect of Awoken that he is indeed a very robust and powerful man, and yet on a few rare occasions, Achebe reveals that Awoken is capable of human thought and emotion. “He was afraid of being thought weak. (Things Fall Apart, p. 61) In a rare moment Awoken questions his asexuality and believes himself to have become “a shivering old woman”(Things Fall Apart, p. 65) when he is thinking about how he killed Shameful.
As you can see Awoken fig leafs or just plain outright lies to himself saying that he is a very in the saddle man but the truth is once he kills a boy he becomes very lethargic. Awoken was a very detached man in the sense of not being able to show his emotion to the people around him. Awoken never showed any emotion openly, unless it be the emotion of” things fall apart peg. 25) because “to show affection was a sign of weakness” (things fall apart peg. 25).
So when he was proud of Shameful he never said anything about it to anyone but himself, and because of that he only treated him as he treated the others. Though Awoken did treat him as a son and therefore you can tell he did care about him but that was the only he actually showed he cared. Awoken was a very self centered man even after exile his ultimate goal is to become chief of the clan.
Even in his first year of exile he had begun to plan for his return” (Things fall apart peg. 125). So he had decided he was going to make “his compound on a more magnificent scale”(Things fall apart peg. 125). “He would build a bigger barn than he had before and… New huts huts for two new wives” (Things fall apart peg. 125). ‘ ‘Then he would show his wealth by initiating his sons into the zoo society” (Things fall apart peg. 125). As you can see Ginkgo’s exile did not affect him at all in any way.
Basically he would return with a flourish, and regain the seven wasted years” (Things fall apart peg. 1 25). “Ginkgo’s body was dangling… Dead” (Things fall apart peg. 152). In the end Ginkgo’s egocentric personality ended him up in death by suicide. It is very sad that all he really cared about was his status and becoming the chief. Things Fall Apart is a book full of tragedies really but the main tragedy is Ginkgo’s. China Achebe does a very good job at portraying this throughout the whole book.
