Achebe wrote Things Fall Apart to be an antithesis to much of European literature, and his characterization of Okonkwo as almost a tragic hero serves this purpose. Because Okonkwo has 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 foreign. 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 standards, a main point for postcolonialist writers. However, just because Okonkwo is an inversion of the traditional tragic hero does not mean that the archetype cannot apply to cultures outside of Europe; rather, it simply means that archetypes can be modified to create greater literary variety, in the same way that novels written by Africans, Europeans, and other cultures introduce essential diversity to the literary world.