The paper compares the demise of John, the major character in Brave New World, and Okonkwo, the main character in Things Fall Apart. The two major characters from the two novels ultimately commit suicide after experiencing the same fate. Okonkwo is driven to change his life for the better and works to rectify his father's wrongs. In contrast to his father, who was careless and lackadaisical with his life and family, he makes an effort to live a life with meaning. He eventually came to detest his father's character and everything he stood for. Therefore, he ended up becoming an unusual person in the society who was feared and famous. On the other hand, John who assumes the role of the main character in the novel, Brave New World, is also a product of social misfit as he felt alienated between his origin place of birth and his the new society where he lives with his mother. When he went back to his place of origin, he found a community that was opposed to human individuality and uniqueness and was inclined to produce similar persons using science and the use of drugs. John is opposed to the idea, and as a result, he is antagonistic with the community political leaders leading to his life in isolation. The primary cause of the downfall of the two leaders is their particular personality and their inability to compromise their values for the sake of fitting into the societies. Their obsession with individual values and virtues in the culture leads to their death and consequent downfall.
Okonkwo is motivated to be something different his father was and tries his best to obtain values that were a direct opposite of his father. Therefore, he works so hard to amass wealth to feed his family. His father was weak, and a laughing stoke in his village and thus Okonkwo ensured that he became a respected member of the society through becoming a warrior and a respected member of his community (Whittaker, David, 32). Therefore, the motivation to oppose his father made him not to adopt any values that are good as long as they depicted weakness and vulnerability. The character he assumes out of his motivation makes him abstract to the world of reality where people compromise their values for the sake of peaceful coexistence in the society. As a result, he becomes abusive to his children and occasionally battered his three wives in the event they showed resistance and defiance. In an extreme action, he ended up committing murder of his son who in his point of view was weak and womanish like his father.
Therefore, the first cause of Okonkwo’s downfall is his strange personality he acquired so as to outlive his dad. On the other hand, John received his personality out of his obsession with the works of William Shakespeare poetry and took his values from the over 900 year’s old author. Notably, all the human and humanitarian values held dear by the author formed the framework of the values possessed by the World State. Just like Okonkwo, the values he possessed made antagonistic with the society and eventually causing his downfall. In both stories, their motivation in life alienates them with the society, and they end up living in their world as loners who never accommodated any contrary opinions in their way of lives. Notably, the values they possessed could not rhyme with the reality of the world around them, and thus the conflict that arose between them, as a result, caused their downfall.
In the world that John lived, three societies existed, the civilized society where a character like Mustapha Mond and Bernard existed, the ancient society where John and his mother Linda belonged, and the old society that is not well depicted in the novel though is evident from the description of other characters. The communities are very different, and they possessed different values (Bloom, Harold, 12). The civilized society used to create people and condition them for stability and happiness. The ancient society was far much behind the civilized society technologically, and they are very religious as compared to the rest. John, as a character in the Brave New World, tries to link all the three communities, as an issue that caused his downfall. He interested in participating in the Indian religious ritual but is not allowed to take part in the ceremony since he was termed as an outsider. Also, in the World state society, John faces significant rejection due to the cultural differences between his savage social and the World State society. John ended up becoming a social reject of the various ways of life leading to his downfall. John did not associate himself with either of the cultures, and he put an effort to oppose the cultures by discouraging their rituals. He did not adapt well to their various ways of lives and was appalled by the ideas of civilized people.
Consequently, John got himself into a lot of trouble by denouncing civilization. He decided to be the messiah for the group of Deltas by trying to free them from the effect of soma. Unfortunately, the Deltas were not conditioned for truth that John was telling them. Therefore, instead of taking console in the words of John, they become violent, and they reject John’s ideas. The frustration he got from, his various efforts to bring up a society that compromises the savage and the civilized way of lives was also one of the leading causes of his downfall. According to Marx and Mond, John was just an experiment to test the ability of a savage to exist in a civilized society. On the other hand, Okonkwo wanted to live in a society that was free from the influence of the white man and his cultures. He remained naïve of the changes that were happening in his community, and he did not realize that it was a high time for him to change his way of thinking and doing things (Connor, Gregory et al., 18). The values he possessed made him a social outcast just like John and thus leading to their bad choices in life. No one was there to understand them, and thus the two characters ended up being alone and lonely. Okonkwo was violent towards his wives and children who seemed to oppose his way of thinking and rules. He used to overwork them beyond their body stamina and tried to inculcate his virtues to them. His family was a frustration as they did not assume his role and level of responsiveness. Consequently, he committed suicide as a result of the failure. In the same way, John was violent towards Lenina, a woman he was obsessed with after she expressed her interests to make love with him. The violence the two characters showed towards people they loved due to a difference in opinion added in a big way to their downfall.
The downfall of Okonkwo was also contributed by the aspect of being hard in his heart and not giving a leeway to the softness of the heart. He used to block his emotions towards the people he loved, thought love was a sign of weakness which he was not ready to fathom. His fear of being feminine unlike his father led him to do terrible things that disturbed his conscience. He assisted in the murder of Ikemefuna and used to distant from his children emotionally. He ended up disowning his son who according to him, depicted values that were possessed by his father. His actions affect his relationship with his family adversely, and he turned his three wives as child bearers whose work was to serve him food and raise his kids. He used to justify his brutal behavior towards his family and owned it as his subjects (Connor, Gregory et al., 34). The problem of love and intimacy in his life makes him to completely disown the aspects as they were signs of emotions of sign and feminism. Nonetheless, emotions are there despite his effort to fight them. He felt guilty after lying to Ikemefuna to protect the boy from fear and killing him later. His actions sometimes revealed that Okonkwo was not devoid of positive human emotions. Notably, the inner battle between him and the real world contributed to his downfall. On the other hand, John was completely in love with Lamina, but when she showed interest in having sex with him, he literary wages war on her. The inner conflict in him between what he wanted was one of the principle reasons for his suicide. His actions to attack her lover and his participation in an orgy led to his death.
Both Okonkwo and John were tragic heroes, and their downfall was also caused by their inability to express their feelings. Okonkwo’s emotions were complex, and his strong outside values were in conflict with the unmanly inside values. His feelings were expressed in his actions that were not pleasing in the eyes of the society. He was a worrier in the view of the community, but few were willing to emulate him. He was not ready to adapt to the increasing changes in people's culture especially after the coming of the white man and was not willing to learn anything new. In the same way, John was receptive to accept anything from the civilized world and was prepared to oppose any move from the Brave new world. Both characters were not able to agree to the things that were beyond their control and instead took the responsibility of making things right. Okonkwo took as his sole responsibility to provide for his family and did not want any help. On the other hand, John was a product of the civilized world and took as his responsibility to bring change in the way of doing things particularly between the Delta people. He was all alone, and as a result of being overwhelmed by his role, he took away his life. The act of suicide by both the characters, in the end, marked the epitome of their downfall as their death was an apparent show of their total failure to exist in the new world and compromise their way of doing things. Therefore, being social outcasts in a dynamic world was a primary cause of their downfall.
Work Cited
Bloom, Harold. Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. New York, Bloom's Literary Criticism, 2014,.
Connor, Gregory et al. Literature Analysis. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2014,.
Whittaker, David. Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. New York, Rodopi, 2011,.
