Things Fall Apart

Two years into Okonkwo’s exile, Obierika visits him. Uchendu, aware of Obierika’s visit, is waiting when they arrive at his home. After introductions, Uchendu reveals that he knew Obierika’s father, Iweka, back in the “good days when a man had friends in distant clans” (137). They share palm-wine and kola nuts.

Obierika brings the news that Abame, a nearby clan, “has been wiped out” (138). During the previous planting season, a white man, not an albino, arrived on “an iron horse” and encouraged the people of Abame to touch and interact with him. Their Oracle warned against the man, and so the villagers killed him and trapped his horse. But the Oracle also warned that more white men would come, that “they [are] locusts” (139).

Eventually, three more men came, escorted by men “like us” (139). They saw the horse and left. Then, on a market day, these men returned and their followers surrounded the market; they were visible only at the last minute, when “they began to shoot” (139). Only a few survived; “their clan is now completely empty,” and “a great evil has come upon their land” (140).

Uchendu, angry, exclaims that no one should kill a man who, like the white man, “says nothing” (140). He believes that, because they killed the white man without knowing his story, they are “fools” (140). Okonkwo agrees but feels that they are fools because they remained unarmed. Obierika instead focuses on his own fear. He knows stories of white men’s “powerful guns” and “strong drinks” and slavery, but “no one thought they were true” (141). To Uchendu, though, “there is no story that is not true” (141).

Okonkwo and Obierika share a meal in Okonkwo’s home. Obierika passes on greetings to Nwoye from his friend at home. As they exchange news, Obierika explains the two baskets of cowries that he brought to Okonkwo’s home: they are the profits from Okonkwo’s yams, which Obierika sold. Okonkwo asks how he can thank Obierika, who responds that Okonkwo can kill himself or one of his sons; this silences Okonkwo, who concedes and ceases to discuss his thanks further.

Two years later, Obierika visits again and tells of the missionaries who have settled in Umuofia. Some efulufu, or “worthless, empty men,” have converted to Christianity, though most of the respected men in the clan believe that “the white man’s god [will] not last” (143).

Obierika is concerned and comes to speak with Okonkwo when he discovers Nwoye spending time with the missionaries. He confronts Nwoye after he passes the “many difficulties the missionaries […] place between them” and asks the boy why he is with the missionaries; “unhappily,” Nwoye responds that he does not know Okonkwo, who is “not [his] father” (144). This concern prompts Obierika’s visit to Okonkwo.

The narrator then tells the story of Nwoye’s conversion. When Christians first visit Mbanta, using Ibo men from far away (and speaking in strange accents) to translate, they transfix Mbanta. A missionary appeals to Mbanta’s people to “leave [their] wicked ways and false gods” (145). When the white man reveals that he has come to live in the village, they become excited and curious.

The white man gives an answer to each question about ancestors and polytheism. But the men of Mbanta respond with “derisive laughter” (146). Yet, when they break into “one of those gay and rollicking tunes of evangelism,” it “[plucks] at silent and dusty chords in the heart” of the Ibo men (146). Men stay to hear the missionaries speak, but by the end, Okonkwo is still “fully convinced that the man [is] mad” (147).

Nwoye, though, is entranced. He finds “poetry” in this new religion and identifies with it in his “marrow” (147). The hymn is like pouring “drops of frozen rain melting on the dry palate of the panting earth […] into his parched soul” (147).