One of the reasons that Chinua Achebe’s novel is so powerful is that the characters exhibit tremendous internal consistency. Even though they sometimes engage in actions that seem difficult to understand, Achebe always shows the social pressures or internal, psychological conflicts that motivate those actions. As the novel contains a number of minor characters, not all characters are fully developed; the British people, in particular, seem to function as types rather than individuals and sometimes serve primarily to advance the plot elements that feature the Nigerian people.

The characters of Okonkwo and his son Nwoye are among those who show complexity and contradictions. Both are motivated in many ways by the desire to distinguish themselves from their fathers. Both show judgment clouded by their pride. Okonkwo intends to be a good father and to succeed, in part to distinguish himself from what he sees as his father’s failures. In doing so, however, he behaves in ways that create a distance from his own son. By creating this father as a character beset with internal conflicts, Achebe established a believable rationale for his son’s rejection of traditional Igbo life as a way of rejecting his father. Rather than presenting British culture and religion as attractive in and of themselves, Achebe uses the characters to offer reasons that individuals would seek a radically different way of life and belief system, as Nwoye does in converting to the Christianity that is introduced by the British missionaries.