CIVILIZATION OF THE DARK ROMANTIC HEROES IN THINGS FALL APART AND ACROSS THE GOLF

Abstract

This study brings to fore the fallibility of the dark romantic heroes in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Johnson’s Across the Gulf.  The human fallibility construed in the internal conflicts and struggle that juxtapose their external achievements reveals the control of the internal construct over the external. Both heroes, Okonkwo and Ofala became very rich and successful in business and family and are highly respected in their communities but committed suicide and died abominably and tragically. The weave of force that pushed them to succeed is the same force that pushed them to their failure and demise. That force is not external or in their actions, it is in the internal construct of their individual minds. This is the place of the highest civilization in the romanticism tenet, where the life of the individual is shaped and becomes the force that drives the individual to the final destination. The dark romantic pursuit of this research discovered that both heroes in their internal construct struggle with fear, guilt, shame, vengeance and self-destruction, all attributes of the internal construct which the romantics have established is the center of all creativity and dictates the variables of individual lives. While Okonkwo was driven by the fear of failure or of being seen as weak triggered by his father’s weakness and failure that ended in failure and shameful death, Ofala was driven by the fear and shame of revealing that his wife was not chaste, or later that the only son of the family born to him by his wife is not his son.  Both men hide conflict that consumed their minds and while the internal conflict led them to greatness, it ultimately destroyed them. This study establishes that the dark sinister and evil nature can live along with the good within man and can lead to both success and destruction.