"Living fire begets cold, impotent ash." (P.153) In Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart", Okonkwo kills himself because of Nwoye's failure to follow in his footsteps. Throughout "Things Fall Apart", Nwoye has been proving himself time after time a failure to his father. Nwoye was the opposite of his father, he was more like his grandfather, Unoka.. His laziness, degenerate and effeminate behavior, and finally his succumb to the white man drove Okonkwo to commit suicide.
             One of Nwoye's characteristics that Okonkwo very much disliked was his laziness. It was one of the things that Okonkwo stood against because laziness was also one of his father's traits. An example of this is on p.13, "Okonkwo's first son, Nwoye, was then twelve years old but was already causing his father great anxiety for his incipient laziness. At any rate, that was how it looked to his father, and he sought to correct him by constant nagging and beating. And so Nwoye was developing into a sad-faced youth." This example indicates how Okonkwo feels about laziness. He tries to move Nwoye away from laziness by punishing him severly, but is unable to do anything else. Okonkwo's determination to stay away from anything that his father loves prevents him from talking to Nwoye in a gentler way. Okonkwo's inability to communicate with Nwoye in a calmer more gentler way affects their father-son relationship in a bad way. It is the element that drove Nwoye to be the way he is and so then comes the reason why Okonkwo kills himself.
             Furthermore, another of Nwoye's characteristics that Okonkwo hates is Nwoye's degenerate and effeminate behavior. Being degenerate and effeminate was also one of Okonkwo's father, Unoka's traits. An example of this is on p. 57, "Later in the day he called Ikemefuna and told him that he was to be taken home the next day. Nwoye overheard it and burs...