Achebe wrote Things Fall Apart to be an antithesis to much European literature, and his characterization of Okonkwo as an almost tragic hero serves this purpose . Because Okonkwo bears similarities to Oedipus and others, such as Thyestes or Hamlet, he shows Western readers that Africans and members of other marginalized cultures are not completely alien. As a corollary, Okonkwo's failure to fulfill some of the qualities of a tragic hero demonstrates the failure of the primarily Western archetype to represent universal norms, a key point for postcolonialist writers. However, just because Okonkwo is an inversion of the traditional tragic hero does not mean the archetype cannot apply to cultures outside of Europe; instead, it simply means that archetypes can be modified to create more literary variety, in the same way that novels written by Africans, Europeans, and other cultures introduce essential diversity into the literary world.