The Role of Outsiders in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart Essay Sample

An outsider is someone who doesn’t belong in or is left out of groups, they’re excluded from activities, ignored by the people around them. They are not the main characters, not even a side character, they’re simply there to fill in the space in the background. One’s life experiences can be negatively affected by the outsider experience they received by severing relationships with the family unit and harming one’s mental health. 

Bad familial relationships are one of the negative effects of being an outsider. In the novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, Okonkwo killed Ikemefuna, a boy his son, Nwoye, considered a brother. When Nwoye found out about this, “something has given way inside of him. It descended on him again, this feeling, when his father walked in, that night after kill Ikemefuna,” (Achebe, 62). This incident would force Nwoye to distance himself from Okonkwo and put space between them. In the memoir by Firoozeh Dumas, Funny in Farsi, Firoozeh’s mother accompanied Firozeh to her first day of school in America, but when they were there Firoozeh’s mother embarrassed the both of them because she was not educated. Firoozeh was pushing herself to think in a controlling way and she, “decided that starting the next day, she would have to stay home,” (Dumas,13). Firoozeh was humiliated by her mother and made decisions regarding her although she is the child. When Nwoye realized his father killed Ikemefuna he distanced himself from him and slowly the relationship between them became strained. The father-son relationship between Nwoye and Okonkwo and the mother-daughter relationship between Firoozeh and her mother would become tense and forced, internally damaging their family. 

Those who claim that being an outcast creates a positive life experience have a compelling argument, they may state that being an outcast would allow one to “be the most creative and ingenious among us,” (Isn’t Everyone a Bit Wierd, 135). However, being an outcast can be incredibly destructive to a person’s mental health. In the novel by Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Woods, to deal with the suicide of his best friend, Toru closed himself into his home, he was figuratively in a, “suffocating contradiction,” and felt as if he was going, “on endlessly in circles,” (Murakami, 25). Later in the novel, Naoko expressed how alone she was after the death of her boyfriend. Naoko tells Toru that after her boyfriend, “died, I didn’t know how to relate to other people. I didn’t know what it meant to love another person,” (Murakami, 112). Naoko reveals how alone and distraught she felt after her boyfriend’s death. Toru and Naoko both had to deal with the death of a loved one alone and going through this without the help of others caused Toru and Naoko’s mental health to deteriorate at a swift rate. 

As a result of Nwoye and Firoozeh’s experiences as an outsider, their familial relationships became tense and damaged. Toru and Naoko’s social loneliness greatly affected their mental health for the worse. Bad family relationships and the deterioration of one’s mental health are the bleak outcomes gained with outsider experience which negatively affects one’s life experiences. When one is an outsider they aren’t part of any specific social group or particularly close to anyone. An outsider may never get to have their own story, they would just be the background chatter. They’re an extra in their own life.