novel, but once he is separated from his tribe, Okonkwo arguably becomes even more closely tied to its traditions.

When he finally returns, Okonkwo is troubled to find that Christian missionaries have begun to convert people in the tribe. The old traditions have given way to this new, westernized approach. For example, people who had been outcast as a result of the tribal superstitions were able to join the community through Christianity (which taught them that they were accepted as children of God). At first, Okonkwo thinks he and other tribal leaders can stop the missionaries and oust them from the community. He attempts to lead a rebellion, but it fails. Okonkwo and others are imprisoned, and later, most of the tribe decides they are not strong enough to thwart the Christian influence. Okonkwo does not want to stop fighting for the tribal traditions—for a return to the past. He becomes violent, which is something we see as characteristic of Okonkwo in the first section of the novel, and kills a missionary. He eventually hangs himself, either out of stubbornness or despair. His suicide is interpreted by the colonizers as evidence of the "pacification" of the tribal people.

When Okonkwo returns from his seven years of exile, he is disappointed and angered by the progress that the Christian church and missionaries have made in Umuofia. Okonkwo's initial reaction is to gather the young warriors and attack the white men who have infiltrated their region. During a conversation with Obierika, the two men discuss the fate of Abame, and Okonkwo expresses his desire to attack the colonists by saying,

"We would be cowards lo compare ourselves with the men of Abame. Their fathers had never dared to stand before our ancestors. We must fight these men and drive them from the land" (Achebe, 122).

Despite his passionate feelings and hatred towards the European colonists, the majority of villagers do not share the same thoughts and emotions as Okonkwo. He is one of the only men who feel that physical retaliation will resolve the conflict and restore Umuofia back to its former glory. After leading a group of villagers to burn the Christian church, Okonkwo is one of the six men arrested and beaten by the District Commissioner's agents. After returning from his brief captivity, Okonkwo fails to influence the villagers to fight the colonists and ends up decapitating a white messenger in a fit of rage. Rather than be arrested and tortured, Okonkwo hangs himself. Overall, Okonkwo's rash, violent personality leads to his demise as he physically challenges the white colonists and fails to reverse the situation in Umuofia.

Okonkwo reacts to the pervasive influence of the white colonizers the same way that he reacts to most threatening situations: he calls for violence and bloodshed to rectify the situation and reestablish the norms and values that he embodies. When he returns from exile in Mbanta, Okonkwo questions why the village in Umuofia does not simply violently revolt against the white men in the region:

“Perhaps I have been away too long.... But I cannot understand these things you tell me. What is it that has happened to our people? Why have they lost the power to fight?” (175).

As Okonkwo settles back into Umuofia, he experiences friction with the new District Commissioner and the other agents of Western influence in the region. This all comes to a boiling point when Okonkwo murders the head messenger:

“In a flash Okonkwo drew his machete. The messenger crouched to avoid the blow. It was useless. Okonkwo's machete descended twice and the man's head lay beside his uniformed body” (204).

After slaying this man, Okonkwo is later found to have committed suicide. Okonkwo cannot handle the changes to his culture, and he takes his own life, the ultimate taboo according to his customs.

Okonkwo represents a certain way of life amongst the Ibo of Umuofia, and the rise and fall of his fortunes throughout the novel corresponds to the fitness of this way of life in varying situations. Okonkwo's values are ultraconservative: he adheres strictly to tradition and abhors deviation from it. They are also hyper-masculine: Okonkwo prioritizes strength and status over everything else, and he works hard to ensure that he has both physical strength and social clout. In the first third of the novel, before the missionaries arrive, Okonkwo's values serve him well and make him one of the leading men of Umuofia. However, the arrival of the missionaries tests these values and exposes their weaknesses.

When the missionaries come, there are three schools of thought among the villagers: those who want to join them, those who oppose them, and those who feel that compromise is possible. The same is true of the missionaries themselves: Mr. Brown believes in a kind of conversion-through-compromise and is sensitive to the existing culture of the Ibo, while Reverend Smith takes a much harder line and ultimately requires the colonial government to back him up.

Okonkwo is of the school of thought that opposing the missionaries is the only choice. There is no room for compromise, and any suggestion of compromise is in fact a betrayal of all that the Ibo stand for. Reverend Smith agrees that there is no room for compromise, and the villagers are caught between these two unyielding forces. As time goes on, then, Okonkwo's refusal to yield at all leads to the loss of everything he has worked for in his life—his refusal to allow any cooperation between the cultures or allow some level of cultural adaptation leads him to kill himself, something that is considered taboo in his culture. The arrival of the missionaries epitomizes an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object: Okonkwo does not feel that cultural adaptation is what they are aiming for: he thinks that they intend to carry out cultural eradication. In the end, however, his death symbolizes the death of hope for the kind of ultraconservative Ibo culture Okonkwo was attempting to protect. The future will be compromise and, ultimately, conversion.