Okonkwo and David's Fall: A Social- Psychological Analysis

Abstract

Almost in every sphere of life social factors shape human thoughts and behaviors. This writing attempts to survey the social-psychological grounds accountable for the ‘fall’ of the black protagonist Okonkwo in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and of the white protagonist David Lurie in J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace. My intention behind picking up two opposite personalities of different social background is not to show the ‘comparative study’ in the sense of the term but to focus on the working of human inner truth and its cyclic response to particular social factors and imposition. An individual’s psychic crisis will arise if he has to receive any unexpected domination, interference or oppression. Likewise, the suppressed feelings of the ‘oppressed’ expose themselves if chance appears. Okonkwo, the Igbo hero of colonized Nigeria, cannot acclimate to the profound changes brought about by the British colonizers and is subjugated in the clash between two cultures and commits suicide to avoid humiliation from the colonizers. As a product of post-apartheid South Africa, David, along with his daughter, is severely assaulted by the newly powerful Blacks as a response of malevolence towards the former colonizers. With some exceptions, the parallel stories of the protagonists holding graceful positions in society and leading lives of free choice at the outset of the novels; going through the transitional period of wrongdoings resulted from individual faults and receiving punishment of facing harsh reality; and ultimately meeting their collapse as a consequence of the intrusive of external forces will ascertain that when panic and prejudice; hatred and resentment; lust for power and dominance come to the fore, effort at reconciliation is disregarded.  If this state of affairs emerges, disintegration of human condition is unavoidable. ‘Role reversal’ may occur but ‘long-term peace’ is a concept like a mirage. Examination of psychological working and its relation to social condition can explore this state.  This paper will endeavor to study the core causes regarding the inevitability of the fall of Okonkwo and David from social- psychological perspective.