fierce, proud warrior. The death of Okonkwo and the squalid manner in which he dies symbolize the death of Igbo culture. There is a tragicirony in the fact that suicide is regarded as cowardly and disgraceful by the Igbo people, since Okonkwo thinks that the entire society has committed suicide by its failure to repel the foreign interlopers.

In the end, Okonkwo's death is denied the dignity of tragedy not only because it is a suicide, but because the final pages of the book are seen from the perspective of the British district commissioner. The district commissioner is writing a book about the area under his jurisdiction, of which he has no cultural understanding. He thinks at first that the story of Okonkwo's death will fill a page of his book, but quickly demotes Achebe's protagonist to "a reasonable paragraph." This shows that Okonkwo's death will be lost to history, since the tribe has failed to preserve its traditions and the colonizers did not take the trouble to understand them.

The white European colonists gradually undermine the traditional Igbo culture and eventually take control of Umuofia and the surrounding tribes. Okonkwo is portrayed as a callous, obdurate man, who supports traditional Igbo customs and is completely opposed to the spread of European culture in the region. During Okonkwo's exile, the Europeans establish schools, stores, churches, and a bureaucracy in the region that undermines the authority of Umuofia's elders. When Okonkwo returns to his village after seven years, he sees the changes made in his community and responds by destroying a Christian church. Okonkwo and his fellow elders are then arrested, tortured, and disrespected by the European officials, which further antagonizes Okonkwo. Eventually, Okonkwo cannot contain his rage and negative feelings towards the Europeans and ends up decapitating a white messenger after learning that the tribe will not fight against the colonists. Rather than suffer punishment at the hands of the white oppressors, Okonkwo tragically commits suicide by hanging himself from a tree in his compound.

In the end, Okonkwo was the one who decided to kill himself, so it would be difficult to place full or even significant responsibility on the white men.

The white men were pushing an agenda on the Igbo people and it was extremely difficult for Okonkwo to accept, given his enormous drive to succeed based on the tradtional culture and his desire to be the strong man of the tribe.

In the end, as Okonkwo was humiliated by being put in prison and abused by the white man, he had decided that he would try to resist them, he decided that he would take the head off the court messenger.  He saw them as a very real threat to his way of life.  So in this way, the white man put his back up against a wall and contributed to the conditions that led to his death, but it would be difficult to argue that they were responsible for his decision to hang himself.