"One of the central features of Things Fall Apart is Achebe's balancing of principles through the metaphor of masculine and femenine a metaphor that seems to derive from deep within Ibo thought. Thus, the god who, above all others, regulates life in Umuofia is Ani, the earth goddess. And it is a reflection of Okonkwo's failure, to seek balance between the manly virtues and the womanly virtues as understood in Umuofia, that each of the disasters that afflicts him can be seen as a crime against the earth. One is tempted to say that this is Okonkwo's tragic flaw: he is a man who lives in a culture that requires a balance between "masculine" and "feminine" that he does not acknowledge (in part because he is ashamed of his father who has failed to be a "real man"). And it is through this flaw that he is destroyed. A mark of Achebe's mastery is that he manages to communicate this ideal of balance ... even while describing a culture that will strike many modem readers as overwhelmingly---- even oppressively---- dominated by men."
---- Kwame Anthony Appiah
