Things Fall Apart

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1958

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Chapters 10-13

Chapters 14-16

Chapters 17-19

Chapters 20-22

Chapters 23-25

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Vocabulary

Essay Topics

Quiz

Chapters 17-19Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 17 Summary

The white men in Mbanta initially look for the king of the village, but they are led instead to titled men, priests, and elders, who eventually agree to meet with them. When the missionaries ask to buy a plot of land, the rulers of the village sell them the “Evil Forest,” or the place where they bury fetishes, or objects that hold divine power, and those who die of grave diseases.

Uchendu and the other elders believe that the missionaries will recognize the dishonor paid to them, but in the morning, “the crazy men actually [begin] to clear a part of the forest” for their church and home (149). When none of them die, some villagers convert, seeing that “the white man’s fetish [has] unbelievable power” (149).

Nwoye is drawn to the church and passes by it, still afraid of what his father will say and afraid of the clearing that looks “like the open mouth of the Evil Forest” (150). Meanwhile, the church wins more converts as they survive well past the expected wrath of the gods and ancestors. A pregnant woman, Nneka, also converts, but her husband and family see her conversion as “a good riddance,” for she has failed to bear a child (151).

Okonkwo’s cousin, Amikwu, sees Nwoye at the church and shares the news with Okonkwo. When Nwoye returns home, his father threatens to kill him. Uchendu intervenes before Okonkwo can mortally wound his son, and Nwoye walks away. He will “never [return]” (152).

Mr. Kiaga, the leader of the missionaries, welcomes him and shares that he is blessed for forsaking his mother and father, words that Nwoye cannot truly understand. He does think, though, that he will “return later to his mother and his brothers and sisters and convert them to the new faith” (152).

Okonkwo, again introspective, grows angry and then spiteful toward Nwoye. He is nervous, though, when he thinks of “himself and his fathers crowding round their ancestral shrine waiting in vain for worship and sacrifice and finding nothing but ashes of bygone days” while his family worships “the white man’s god” (153). Okonkwo reflects that his son is like his own father, and that he, who is called the “Roaring Flame,” has begotten “cold, impotent ash” (153).

Chapter 18 Summary

Though the church in Mbanta suffers some setbacks, it still grows. Nonetheless, it continues to be a catchall for efulefu, or useless people, and twins, who are thought to be evil and abandoned as babies, rescued from the bush. The villagers do not mind. Only when three converts go to the village and threaten to burn shrines do the villagers retaliate, beating the men until they “[stream] with blood” (154-55).

Stories spread about the political power and justice that the church undertakes elsewhere. The clan fears this force. But they do not know that the converts are split—they are unsure whether they should admit the “outcasts” who arrive seeking welcome (155). The converts must explain to Mr. Kiaga that an outcast, or osu, is “a person dedicated to a god, a thing set apart,” marked by “long, tangled and dirty hair,” who cannot join the “free-born” or share shelter with them (156).

Mr. Kiaga insists on welcoming the outcasts, though, sending some converts back to the village and strengthening the faith of others. He orders the outcasts to shave their hair, and the two who do grow faith when they realize that shaving this shameful mark will not cause them to die. One eventually kills a sacred python, an extreme act that causes the village, under Okonkwo’s leadership, to “ostracize the Christians” (159).

Though a bell-man announces the decision at night, the converts learn the strength of this ostracization when they go to gather water and clay from a stream to clean the church. At the stream, men with whips chase them away. They see this as a sign that “[the villagers] want to ruin [them]” (160).

When the man accused of killing the sacred python, Okoli, dies suddenly, the village sees his death as proof “that the gods [are] still able to fight their own battles,” and they stop “molesting the Christians” (161).

Chapter 19 Summary

At the end of his seven years, Okonkwo prepares to leave behind his “wasted and weary years” in Mbanta (162). Despite his productivity there, he “would have climbed to the utmost heights” in Umuofia (162). Thankful for his warm welcome, he names his first daughter born in Mbanta, “Nneka,” or “Mother is Supreme”; bitter still, he names his next son “Nwofia,” or “Begotten in the Wilderness” (162).

When the dry season arrives, it is time to move to the two huts that Okonkwo had Obierika build for him in his absence. To thank their kinsmen, Okonkwo and his family prepare a feast. Ekwefi and Ezinma go to harvest cassava, but the roots are still small; Ekwefi explains that their failure to flourish is because of the “poor soil” in Mbanta, as compared to Umuofia (165).

Okonkwo provides three goats for the feast, in addition to the other food and wine that his wives prepare. All of Okonkwo’s extended family in the village, led by Uchendu, the oldest living family member, arrive to partake. When Uchendu breaks the kola nut and appeals to their ancestors, he asks, “for health and children” and reflects on the value of family (165).

While his family admires the feast, Okonkwo addresses them, recognizing that “a child cannot pay for its mother’s milk” and that he pulls his family in only because “it is good for kinsmen to meet” (166). The family eats, serving themselves in order of age. Then one of the older kinsmen rises to speak.

The old kinsman admits that they knew that Okonkwo, who is “openhanded,” would give a great feast when he departed (166). He praises Okonkwo for “doing things in the grand, old way” (166) because he “[fears] for the younger generation” (167). Appealing to the youth, he admonishes that they “do not understand how strong is the bond of kinship” and that this lack of respect has allowed “an abominable religion” to flourish among them (167). This old man dreads a clan in which sons leave their fathers and curse the gods of their ancestors. In such a world, men like Okonkwo can be an antidote.

Chapters 17-19 Analysis

The arrival of a competing power, Christianity, brings belief to the fore of Mbanta social life. Though most of the converts are rejects and outcasts, the group gains strength even among the suspicious. This highlights the use of Religion as Politics. Dividing local allegiances was one of the primary ways Western colonizers gained power. By granting privileges to members of the Ibo community who were formerly outcasts, the church wins their loyalty and weakens the local culture’s authority.

The Christians further erode faith in local traditions by their use of architecture as a stand-in for their authority over the land. Spaces in the tribe that are physically marked as defective, insufficient, or unholy are razed and rebuilt as something new; when they build in the Evil Forest or shave the heads of the outcasts, the Christians expose (as some see it) the truth that these designations are arbitrary, not divinely ordained. But the threat to the Ibo community is really a threat of a loss of social order. Beliefs in gods and ancestors unite the people around their traditions, and without that unity, the family body erodes.

Okonkwo’s family body cracks as Nwoye departs from his father, highlighting the theme of The Bond Between Fathers and Sons. In the words of his elder kinsmen, Okonkwo “[does] things in the grand, old way,” for better or for worse (166). Despite his disregard for his own father, Okonkwo never left home; Nwoye’s way is previously unthinkable, a disruption of the family against which tradition cannot speak. Indeed, for all of Okonkwo’s past transgressions against the tribe, each receives an institutional response, either based on tradition (his seven-year exile) or the rulings of the tribe’s egwugwu. The bond between fathers and sons is not always positive; rather, it is often marked by rejection. The disregard of fathers for their sons and vice versa is cyclical, like the seasons or the sun and moon, but Nwoye’s story disrupts this cycle.

Value for mothers and for women continues to emerge as the antidote to Defining Manhood Through Violence. As Okonkwo grows older and wiser, he learns to respect that “Mother is Supreme” (162) and that Mbanta feeds him “mother’s milk” (166). Though he cannot see his time in Mbanta as a blessing, the experience of losing out on the masculine achievement he might have attained in Umuofia helps him grudgingly accept the value of life beyond that virile, manly world.