Okonkwo · son and father · Unoka
Okonkwo is ruled by one passion, “to hate everything that his father Unoka had loved” (Chapter 2). The novel shows the cost: in rejecting Unoka’s weakness he also rejects his music, his warmth and his ease with people.
Okonkwo · father and eldest son · Nwoye
Okonkwo fears he sees Unoka in Nwoye and tries to beat it out of him. After Ikemefuna’s death the boy drifts away, and his conversion in Chapters 16 and 17 ends the relationship.
Okonkwo · guardian and ward · Ikemefuna
Ikemefuna calls Okonkwo father, and Okonkwo grows very fond of him, inwardly, never showing it. He strikes the final blow in Chapter 7 because he fears being thought weak.
Nwoye · like brothers · Ikemefuna
Ikemefuna kindles a new fire in the younger boy and makes him feel grown-up. The older boy’s death breaks something in Nwoye that the missionaries’ hymns later seem to answer.
Okonkwo · father and favourite daughter · Ezinma
She understands him better than any of his other children, he thinks in Chapter 20, and he can only praise her by wishing she were a boy. His hidden fear for her shows in Chapter 12.
Okonkwo · husband and second wife · Ekwefi
She ran away from her first husband, Anene, to live with him, and he once fired his gun at her in anger (Chapter 5). Their shared fear for Ezinma is the tenderest thing in the marriage.
Ekwefi · mother and only surviving child · Ezinma
After nine children died in infancy, Ekwefi’s bond with Ezinma is almost that of equals. She follows Chielo through the night rather than let her daughter go alone.
Chielo · friends, and priestess and worshipper · Ekwefi
In ordinary life Chielo shares a market shed with Ekwefi and calls Ezinma her daughter; as priestess of Agbala she carries the child to the caves, and Ekwefi must obey and follow.
Okonkwo · closest friends · Obierika
Obierika questions where Okonkwo obeys, helps him in exile, explains the colonial takeover to him, and speaks for him at the end.
Okonkwo · nephew and maternal uncle · Uchendu
Uchendu shelters him in exile and tries to teach him that strength includes finding comfort, a lesson Okonkwo cannot fully accept.
Mr Brown · predecessor and successor · Reverend James Smith
Brown restrains his converts and learns about the clan’s religion; Smith openly condemns Brown’s policy of compromise and encourages the zealots, and the conflict follows.
Mr Brown · missionary and elder in debate · Akunna
Their long talks about God and Chukwu convert neither man, but they show two systems of belief meeting as equals, which does not last.
Obierika · accuser and colonial official · The District Commissioner
At the tree in Chapter 25 Obierika blames him for Okonkwo’s death. The Commissioner cannot understand what Obierika means and plans to reduce the story to a paragraph.