Okonkwo is a self made man, hard working and a wrestling champion. His father was totally unlike him and died leaving a legacy of debt and neglect. Okonkwo is ashamed by his father's life and vows never to be weak. He has build himself a decent estate and has three wives and many children. His father's timidness and debts haunts him and so he strives for wealth, strength and respectable place in a society which he ultimately all achieves. Okonkwo is appointed a guardian of Ikemefuna (who is taken from his clan as a settlement for a murder) and this boy lives with him now and their relationship flourishes. Later the village oracle orders the boy to be killed. Okonkwo, to avoid looking weak killed the boy himself despite having a choice to not be party to the killing. Amid a enveloping gloom for killing the boy who he cherished (and the feeling was mutual), things start going wrong for Okonkwo. In a community funeral, Okonkwo gun accidentally kills someone. He and his family are sent into seven year exile to please the gods that has been aggrieved.
While away in exile, he learns of the advent of christian missionaries who have started their proselytizing among the tribes. Slowly as their numbers grew, they introduced the white man's law and government. The locals adjust to this new environment with a bit of give and take for they do not believe their society could be upended by them. Okonkwo's son joins the missionaries as he resents his father's behavior towards him. Okonkwo is ashamed by this. After finishing his exile, Okonkwo returns to his village and find it a changed place. Tribal customs & practices have been replaced by Church and its followers intent on mischief and disrespect. After a convert vandalizes a cultural ceremony, the clansmen destroy the local church. Okonkwo and other community elders are arrested and badly insulted in the custody by the fledgling administration pending a payment for damages. After their release, the disquiet quickly swells into calls to finally uproot this new system. Okonkwo, ferocious as ever saw this as a chance to wage the decisive war against white people. In a meeting of community elders to decide future course of action, messengers of the government intervenes. Okonkwo in a fit of rage, beheads one of them. The clansman allow the rest of the group to flee. At that moment Okonkwo knew that Umuofia will not go to war. Instead of resolute action, he heard voices of tumult and of questioning his action. When the white government came to arrest him, he had already hanged himself to avoid getting tried in the courts that he did not believe in. In his suicide, Okonkwo was repulsed by his tribe for its a sin to kill oneself. Its an abomination for them to even bury such a man!
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Couple of theme are very evident in the book. One about Okonkwo and his fall from grace in the tribal society and the other being the clash of cultures and the uncompromising world view that the new world order brings that wipes clean anything that it does not see fit. Both are conflicts that are eternal. One is the individual conflict, of finding one's place in the society of men, of greatness and respect, of not appearing to look weak, of being ashamed by failures and non-conformity. The cast and situations may change but these struggles are same in human society since time immemorial. Okonkwo was haunted by his father's failure. For him, that shame was life long and everything he did was to undo that legacy. That drive and ambition and his innate sense to appear strong drove his every day behavior. The greatness that he had accomplished was something that constantly need to be groomed and worked upon. It was not given or ordained to him and he did good for himself. But a sudden misfortune (by accidentally killing a clansman), this was all lost. His estate, his wealth, his place in society but he keeps his honor by going into exile. That surety about his place in society, that familiarity of pace of things is lost when on return he sees his world has been trampled by new order that does not care or accommodates. He shakes it off violently and in that end up losing his life in ignominy. He suffers the same fate as his father who died in shame. Even as cultures as old as Okonkwo the trials and tribulations of the life are same.
The other theme is of change and especially in context of proselytizing religions. Okonkwo had lived off that land for thousands of years. His world view, his customs, his religion, his law, his society has been created and refined over countless generations to suit his needs and his people and his lands. To an outsider it may appear brutal or without taste and monotonous but there was life and there was every day drama in it. But the social order could not hold under the aggressive and over zealous nature of the missionaries who come with the self appraised notion of 'bringing the lords name' or 'reforming the savages'. The natives could have measured up to say a devastating famine or incessant internecine wars or hunger. But how to measure up to a system or a social order that is totally new and unforeseen and uncompromising. Of what will become of clan elders when white man's runs it's courts. Of what will become of our gods when we have to pray to his foreign god. Of what will become of our spoken tradition when our children go to their schools and learn their language. Our whole lives become meaningless. That certainty of life, of how things are, of death , even a heroic death in war or sudden death due to preventable fever has been lost. Things fall apart, of center that could not hold.
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