PLOT

OVERVIEW
Okonkwo is a wealthy and respected warrior of the Umuofia clan, a lower
Nigerian tribe that is part of a consortium of nine connected villages. He is
haunted by the actions of Unoka, his cowardly and spendthrift father, who
died in disrepute, leaving many village debts unsettled. In response,
Okonkwo becomes a clansman, warrior, farmer, and family provider
extraordinaire. He has a twelve-year-old son named Nwoye whom he finds
lazy; Okonkwo worries that Nwoye will end up a failure like Unoka.

In a settlement with a neighboring tribe, Okonkwo wins a virgin and a fifteen-

year-old boy for the tribe. Okonkwo takes charge of the boy, Ikemefuna, and
finds an ideal son in him. Nwoye likewise forms a strong attachment to the
newcomer. Despite his fondness for Ikemefuna and despite the fact that the
boy begins to call him “father,” Okonkwo does not let himself show any
affection for him.

During the Week of Peace, Okonkwo accuses his youngest wife, Ojiugo, of
negligence. He severely beats her, breaking the peace of the sacred week.
He makes some sacrifices to show his repentance, but he has shocked his
community irreparably.

Ikemefuna stays with Okonkwo’s family for three years. Nwoye looks up to
him as an older brother and, much to Okonkwo’s pleasure, develops a more
masculine attitude. One day, the locusts come to Umuofia— they will come
every year for seven years before disappearing for another generation. The
village excitedly collects them because they are good to eat when cooked.

Ogbuefi Ezeudu, a respected village elder, informs Okonkwo in private that

the Oracle has said that Ikemefuna must be killed. He tells Okonkwo that
because Ikemefuna calls him “father,” Okonkwo should not take part in the
boy’s death. Okonkwo lies to Ikemefuna, telling him that they must return
him to his home village. Nwoye bursts into tears.

As he walks with the men of Umuofia, Ikemefuna thinks about seeing his
mother. After several hours of walking, some of Okonkwo’s clansmen attack
the boy with machetes. Ikemefuna runs to Okonkwo for help. But Okonkwo,
who doesn’t wish to look weak in front of his fellow tribesmen, cuts the boy
down despite the Oracle’s admonishment. When Okonkwo returns home,
Nwoye deduces that his friend is dead.
Okonkwo sinks into a depression, able neither to sleep nor eat. He visits his
friend Obierika and begins to feel revived a bit. Okonkwo’s daughter Ezinma
falls ill, but she recovers after Okonkwo gathers leaves for her medicine.

The death of Ogbuefi Ezeudu is announced to the surrounding villages by

means of theekwe,a musical instrument. Okonkwo feels guilty because the
last time Ezeudu visited him was to warn him against taking part in
Ikemefuna’s death. At Ogbuefi Ezeudu’s large and elaborate funeral, the men
beat drums and fire their guns. Tragedy compounds upon itself when
Okonkwo’s gun explodes and kills Ogbuefi Ezeudu’s sixteen- year-old son

Because killing a clansman is a crime against the earth goddess, Okonkwo

must take his family into exile for seven years in order to atone. He gathers
his most valuable belongings and takes his family to his mother’s natal
village, Mbanta. The men from Ogbuefi Ezeudu’s quarter burn Okonkwo’s
buildings and kill his animals to cleanse the village of his sin.

Okonkwo’s kinsmen, especially his uncle, Uchendu, receive him warmly. They
help him build a new compound of huts and lend him yam seeds to start a
farm. Although he is bitterly disappointed at his misfortune, Okonkwo
reconciles himself to life in his motherland.

During the second year of Okonkwo’s exile, Obierika brings several bags of
cowries (shells used as currency) that he has made by selling Okonkwo’s
yams. Obierika plans to continue to do so until Okonkwo returns to the
village. Obierika also brings the bad news that Abame, another village, has
been destroyed by the white man

Soon afterward, six missionaries travel to Mbanta. Through an interpreter

named Mr. Kiaga, the missionaries’ leader, Mr. Brown, speaks to the villagers.
He tells them that their gods are false and that worshipping more than one
God is idolatrous. But the villagers do not understand how the Holy Trinity
can be accepted as one God. Although his aim is to convert the residents of
Umuofia to Christianity, Mr. Brown does not allow his followers to antagonize
the clan.

Mr. Brown grows ill and is soon replaced by Reverend James Smith, an
intolerant and strict man. The more zealous converts are relieved to be free
of Mr. Brown’s policy of restraint. One such convert, Enoch, dares to unmask
an egwugwu during the annual ceremony to honor the earth deity, an act
equivalent to killing an ancestral spirit. The next day, the egwugwu burn
Enoch’s compound and Reverend Smith’s church to the ground.
The District Commissioner Is upset by the burning of the church and requests
that the leaders of Umuofia meet with him. Once they are gathered,
however, the leaders are handcuffed and thrown in jail, where they suffer
insults and physical abuse.

After the prisoners are released, the clansmen hold a meeting, during which
five court messengers approach and order the clansmen to desist. Expecting
his fellow clan members to join him in uprising, Okonkwo kills their leader
with his machete. When the crowd allows the other messengers to escape,
Okonkwo realizes that his clan is not willing to go to war.

When the District Commissioner arrives at Okonkwo’s compound, he finds

that Okonkwo has hanged himself. Obierika and his friends lead the
commissioner to the body. Obierika explains that suicide is a grave sin; thus,
according to custom, none of Okonkwo’s clansmen may touch his body. The
commissioner, who is writing a book about Africa, believes that the story of
Okonkwo’s rebellion and death will make for an interesting paragraph or two.
He has already chosen the book’s title: The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes
of the Lower Niger.

CHAPTER 1-3
We are introduced immediately to the complex laws and customs of
Okonkwo’s clan and its commitment to harmonious relations. For example,
the practice of sharing palm-wine and kola nuts is repeated throughout the
book to emphasize the peacefulness of the Igbo. When Unoka’s resentful
neighbor visits him to collect a debt, the neighbor does not immediately
address the debt. Instead, he and Unoka share a kola nut and pray to their
ancestral spirits; afterward, they converse about communit affairs at great
length. The customs regulating social relations emphasize their common
interests and culture, diffusing possible tension. The neighbor further eases
the situation by introducing the subject of debt through a series of Igbo
proverbs, thus making use of a shared oral tradition, as Okonkwo does when
he asks Nwakibie for some seed yams. Through his emphasis on the
harmony and complexity of the Igbo, Achebe contradicts the stereotypical,
European representations of Africans as savages.

Another important way in which Achebe challenges such stereotypical

representations is through his use of language. As Achebe writes in his essay
on Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness, colonialist Europe tended to
perceive Africa as a foil or negation of Western culture and values, imagining
Africa to be a primordial land of silence. But the people of Umuofia speak a
complex language full of proverbs and literary and rhetorical devices.
Achebe’s translation of the Igbo language into English retains the cadences,
rhythms, and speech patterns of the language without making them sound,
as Conrad did, “primitive.”

Okonkwo is the protagonist of Things Fall Apart, and, in addition to situating

him within his society, the first few chapters of the novel offer us an
understanding of his nature. He is driven by his hatred of his father, Unoka,
and his fear of becoming like him. To avoid picking up Unoka’s traits,
Okonkwo acts violently without thinking, often provoking avoidable fights. He
has a bad temper and rules his household with fear. Okonkwo associates
Unoka with weakness, and with weakness he associates femininity. Because
his behavior is so markedly different from his father’s, he believes that it
constitutes masculinity. However, it strains his relationship with Nwoye and
leads him to sin in Chapter 4 by breaking the Week of Peace. His rash
behavior also causes tension within the community because he expresses
disdain for less successful men. Ikemefuna later demonstrates that
masculinity need not preclude kindness, gentleness, and affection, and
Nwoye responds far more positively to Ikemefuna’s nurturing influence than
to Okonkwo’s heavy-handedness.

Despite its focus on kinship, the Igbo social structure offers a greater chance
for mobility than that of the colonizers who eventually arrive in Umuofia.
Though ancestors are revered, a man’s worth is determined by his own
actions. In contrast to much of continental European society during the
nineteenth century, which was marked by wealth-based class divisions, Igbo
culture values individual displays of prowess, as evidenced by their wrestling
competitions. Okonkwo is thus able, by means of his own efforts, to attain a
position of wealth and prestige, even though his father died, penniless and
titleless, of a shameful illness.

QUESTIONS

PART1-CHAPTER 1

1.How does eighteen-year-old, Okonkwo, bring honor to his village?

2.When Okonkwo is angry and cannot speak because of his stutter, how does
he get his point across?
3.Who is Okonkwo’s father?

4.Why doesn’t Okonkwo have any patience with his father?

5.When is the only time that Unoka is not haggard and mournful?

6.Why does Unoka’s neighbor, Okoye, visit him?

7.Why does Unoka change the subject to music when he and Oybe are
discussing the impending war with the village of Mbaino?

8.While talking with Okoye about the war, Unoka changes the subject to
which topic?

9.Why does Okoye need to collect a past debt from Unoka?

10.The Ibo people consider conversation to be very important. What form of

conversation do they regard the most highly?

11.How does Unoka react when Okoye asks him to repay the two hundred
cowries owed to him?

12.Why is Okonkwo considered one of the greatest men of his time?

CHAPTER 2

1.What is used to inform all the men of the Umuofia to meet in the market
place the following morning?

2.What do the people of Umuofia fear in the night?

3.Okonkwo does not fear war. In the last war he fought, he brought home a
souvenir which he drank palm-wine out of. What is this souvenir?

4.Who is the powerful orator that informs the ten thousand men of the
emergency facing the nine villages of Umuofia?

5.What is the emergency that the great orator announces at the meeting in
the marketplace?

6.What ultimatum is dispatched to Mbaino as a consequence of the murder

of the woman from Umuofia?

7.Why is Umuofia feared by all its neighbors?

8.Okonkwo of Umuofia is the emissary of war to Mbaino. What does Mbaino

give him as an offering for the murder of the woman from Umuofia?

9.What are the things that Okonkwo fears most?

10.What is the one passion that rules Okonkwo’s life?

11.Why is Okonkwo’s twelve-year-old son, Nwoye, causing him great

anxiety?

12.Okonkwo is very prosperous, owning a large compound with many huts,

and an abundance of food. Ikemefuna is given to Okonkwo to live with him
until the clan decides Ikemefuna’s fate. How does Ikemefuna react to living
with Okonkwo?