Traditionally, the colonized country is depicted as a woman ripe for the harvest; the colonizer arrives and plunderes the land. What distinguishes Achebe's novel from this tradition is that it examines the slow emasculation of a male protagonist. While his village is certainly being exploited, he is stripped of his masculine power and nothing more. Okonkwo's surrender is given no sexual connotation. Although he is ultimately seen as rather feminine in nature due to the hidden suicide and the system's lack of support towards him, he is not exploited in any way. The inspector is vaguely interested in him, but above all he dismisses him to think about his book. It is this dismissal, however, that marks the real shift in power from the beginning to the end of the novel. At the beginning of the novel, Okonkwo is a symbol of masculinity; in the end, he is simply a corpse in a tree, not even worthy enough to be handled by his people. The rise to power of the district commissioner and the dismissal of Okonkwo foreshadow what will happen to Umuofia when the colonizers have exhausted its resources: it will simply no longer be