Writing the Literary Analysis Essay II: Drafting on Things Fall Apart

This unit's essay raises the bar set in Unit 2: a strong thesis about Things Fall Apart usually has to hold two scales at once, Okonkwo's individual hamartia and the larger historical and structural forces closing in around him, since the novel insists both matter and neither alone fully explains its ending. A thesis that blames Okonkwo alone ("Okonkwo's pride destroys him") ignores the changing world the second half of the novel spends so much time establishing; a thesis that blames only colonial disruption ("colonialism destroys Umuofia") ignores that Okonkwo's specific downfall follows a hamartia the novel establishes well before any outside contact.

A strong option is a thesis that explicitly connects both scales: for instance, arguing that Okonkwo's rigid fear of weakness, which might have been simply a flaw within a stable Umuofia, becomes fatal specifically because it collides with a changing world that no longer rewards or even recognizes his particular kind of strength. This kind of thesis also opens a natural comparative option: a body paragraph could briefly connect Okonkwo's downfall to Creon's from Unit 2, since both are capable, respected figures whose rigid refusal to adapt becomes fatal only once new pressures make that inflexibility catastrophic -- a genuinely cross-cultural literary claim, exactly the kind of thinking this course exists to build.