Things Fall Apart Chapters 9-17

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Things Fall Apart Chapters 9-17

1Tess_W
Dic 16, 2021, 11:44 am

Please discuss your thoughts and feeling concerning chapters 9-17.

2Tess_W
Modificato: Gen 7, 2022, 11:19 am

Chapter 9--this chapter presents a dichotomy in the way that we have been led to think of women in this book. In chapter 9 we find that both Okonkwo and Ekewefi are concerned for their daughter. I also just realized (but it may have been portrayed before) that women did play an important part, as a woman spoke on behalf of the Igbo god, Agbala. It's also one redeeming (albeit barely) quality of Okonkwo...that he went out in the forest to secure medicine for his sick daughter.

3Tess_W
Modificato: Gen 7, 2022, 11:56 am

Chapter 10--We get to see up close the Igbo judicial system and can note some similarities with western justice. I wonder if the author's time in the U.S. influenced this depiction or the similarities are coincidence or universal.

Chapter 11- I think there is some more foreshadowing here. The proverb " a man who makes trouble for others is also making trouble for himself."

Here we also see the oral tradition of passing on "myths" or "legends" in the example of why the tortoise shell is not o
smooth.

Chapter 13--more of Okwonko's undoing. I'm liking the village "wiseman", Obierika , as he questions many of the customs of the village.

Interesting that crimes are divided into male and female crimes. Manslaughter--not purposeful, is a female crime.

Summary part one: Okwonko is very flawed. (as we all are) He is proud, cold, abusive, quick to anger, and distant to his children. Most of his troubles he has brought on himself.
This is the end of part 1. I'm not enthralled with the book. I think it is a good tale of the Igbo culture. The writing is straight forward, but not exactly rhythmic--something I think I'm used to reading mainly British/American works.

Chapter 15--now I'm confused about Obierka. He and Okwonko have a dialogue where Obierka asks Okwonko to kill one of his sons for him or himself????

The white man have shown up and is promptly killed. The oracle predicted that "albinos" will be disaster. (And boy, they weren't wrong!)

Chapter 16 The "missionaries" seem to win over some of the clan, mostly people of low status. What does this mean? They had no status, probably poor, and the missionaries gave them hope? They were uneducated and not able to discern? Of maybe a combination of both!

Chapter 17 The missionaries build a church in the Evil forest and it thrives, much to the astonishment of the villagers. The villagers begin to see their religion as outdated and powerless. Okwonko's son, Nwoye, is converted and of course, Okwonko goes into a fit of rage.

P.S. I have finished the book and am writing notes from the highlights I made in the e-text.

4raton-liseur
Modificato: Gen 9, 2022, 10:36 am

Part 1:
I've finished part 1 this morning (and the whole book latter in the day, but I'll comment on the rest elsewhere). It's the main part of the book in terms of length (more or less half of it), and it depicts the Igbo society before the arrival of white men. Despite being written in an active tense and not a descriptive one (as in “he did this” rather than “he was doing this”), it is a static part: things do not seem to move, the society seems unchanging and unchangeable).
I reminded me of the famous sentence by one of former president: “The African man has not yet entered in historical times”. Although I do not agree with him, I feel that this first part goes along with what he says. Is it Chinua Achebe’s own perception, or is it a perception acquired from being in the company of white thinkers (colonial administration, ethnologists, etc.) from that time, I could not say.

However, there are a few signs that colonisation is already on its way even if the people from Umuofia don’t know it. First, Okonkwo owns a gun. Although he is not very good using it (we are told he never managed to kill something with it (good for his second wife!), he does own this piece of western craftsmanship. As a side note, it’s interesting to see that it is this gun that triggers Okonkwo’s disgrace and exile at the end of part 1. The end of stability is therefore triggered by an early input from the white culture.)
Second, maize is cultivated in the village. This plant comes from the american continent, and is therefore a sign that there are link between the village and the Europeans.

5raton-liseur
Gen 9, 2022, 10:31 am

>3 Tess_W: A few quick reactions to your post, if I may.
Chapter 15 - Obierka and Okwonko have a dialogue where Obierka asks Okwonko to kill one of his sons for him or himself????
I think it is a traditional dialogue, where questions and answers are determined in advance. Obierka asks for something extravagant, just to show that he cannot be thanked and therefore, as Okonkwo says at the end of the dialogue, the mere act of thanking has to be forgotten. I don’t think this should be taken literally as Obierka asking for some kind of sacrifice.
But the paralell with God requesting Abraham to kill his own son struck me (althoug I might be overinterpreting).

Chapter 16 - The "missionaries" seem to win over some of the clan, mostly people of low status. What does this mean? They had no status, probably poor, and the missionaries gave them hope? They were uneducated and not able to discern? Of maybe a combination of both!
I would tend to agree more with your first hypothesis. In India, most of the Christians are from the dalit/untouchable cast. This is usually explained because changing religion allows them to extract themselves from the cast system that doom them to a marginalised life.
This is also what is suggested by the fact that one of the first one to come to the church is a pregnant woman who have given birth four times, and four times to twins… Joining the new religion allows her to break a traditional rule that is too painful for her.

6raton-liseur
Modificato: Gen 9, 2022, 10:53 am

Chapter 11
I don't know what to do about this episode of Ezinma, Ekwefi's daughter being taken for a night by Agbala’s priestess. Is it because she is often ill and she tries some magic to fortify her? Is it because she plans to initiate her and make her her successor? There is nothing in the book latter that allowed me to understand this part.

Chapter 15
Following on my part 1’s remark, this second chapter of part two is also the first time there is an indication of time passing, with Uchendu, Okonkwo maternal uncle, saying that the new generation does not travel enough from villages to villages to maintain ties between the clans.
(There might be another instance of time passing before, but I can’t find it anymore).

Chapter 15 is also the arrival of the White. There has already been a mention of white people in part 1, but they have been identified with lepers. This time, the first reaction is to identify them with albinos. I find this unawareness about White quite strange, as there has been some European presence in the area for centuries (there is an allusion to slavery at one point) and as I said earlier, there are guns and maize in this village. The Igbo area seems to have been greatly protected from the European influence till really late compared to other regions in West Africa.

7raton-liseur
Gen 9, 2022, 1:02 pm

I forgot to ask... In chapter 15, when the first White appears, he says one word that the people of the village do not understand, but the seem to be close to "Mbaino". Did someone manage to guess what he was trying to say?

8Tess_W
Gen 13, 2022, 5:46 am

>5 raton-liseur: I was in a quandary about this, also. I was unsure if this was a ritual or a proverb of the tribe, scripted in advance, or Obierka was literally serious. When I read this I also thought of Abraham/Isaac.

9raton-liseur
Gen 13, 2022, 7:08 am

>8 Tess_W: I definitely support the second option. It feels like a "giving thanks" rite scripted in advance.

10librorumamans
Gen 13, 2022, 6:43 pm

>7 raton-liseur: Did someone manage to guess what he was trying to say?

Obierika says that the white man spoke through his nose. I read this as Achebe's sly dig at the educated English drawl. One of Obierika's companions says he repeated what sounded like "Mbaino" several times and wonders if, perhaps, he was lost.

I took this to mean that one of the villages thereabouts was called this, and the Englishman was asking directions.

11librorumamans
Gen 13, 2022, 7:11 pm

In addition to the gun and the maize, there was a curious reference earlier in the book to slavery that indicated that these Ibo people knew of it only by hearsay.

At first I found this puzzling. By the second half of the book I began to understand that Achebe is not writing an historical novel depicting Ibo culture in, say, 1870; rather he's painting an idealized picture of how that culture existed in the time out of time before the English exerted control.

So, the world is out there, but not directly accessible. Guns and maize had been around for centuries and they had proliferated, but not through direct contact. It's as though in the first third or half of the book there's a thin layer of Vaseline on the lens that puts everything into a somewhat hazy "once upon a time." In the latter part of the book, Achebe wipes off the film and we see a less distorted view of how the English took control and how it affected the Ibo people.

12raton-liseur
Gen 14, 2022, 6:09 am

>10 librorumamans: Yes, it makes sense.

>11 librorumamans: This is a really interesting analysis. I was puzzled as well by how little this village knew about white men.
But if we go by this, I feel it makes the novel slightly less strong: things do not fall apart at once anymore...

13Tess_W
Gen 14, 2022, 6:13 am

>12 raton-liseur: I agree with "things do not fall apart at once anymore" I'm in the minority (at least on this board), as to when things began to fall apart. (It may not be important!?) I think the Igbo society would have imploded by itself without the advent of the white man.

14raton-liseur
Gen 14, 2022, 7:50 am

>13 Tess_W: I don't see why it would implode by itself. Evolve, yes, as all societies do. But I don't think there is evidence of internal flaws so important that they would have destroyed the society.
We do not have all the information regarding how the society is structured. But I feel that Achebe gives a feeling of coherence. As far as I can see, the disruption is never internal.

15librorumamans
Gen 14, 2022, 9:55 am

>13 Tess_W: I think the Igbo society would have imploded by itself without the advent of the white man.

Can you expand on this, please?

16librorumamans
Modificato: Gen 14, 2022, 11:47 am

>12 raton-liseur: I feel it makes the novel slightly less strong: things do not fall apart at once anymore...

As I commented in the next thread, Achebe writes on two levels, the broad social and the individual. So at the social level, as a historian or anthropologist would view it, things fall apart over a period of time. But for Okonkwo himself – the character Achebe has created to carry this story of collapse – things fall apart suddenly.

ETA:
Stepping out onto uncertain ground, I add that we're dealing with an oral culture. My sense is that an oral culture passes down its knowledge and wisdom as well as its history often in the form of stories, some of which we might also term parables. So I wonder if we might consider that Achebe has incorporated aspects of his own story-telling tradition into the format of the European novel. This could add another facet to our understanding of the novel.

17raton-liseur
Gen 14, 2022, 12:46 pm

>16 librorumamans: I agree on the two levels: social and individual. But if the social aspect of the novel is not grounded in the reality (if we consider, as you suggest, that the pre-colonial time in part I is not the "exact" (with caveats, I am conscious we do not necesarily have a full historical picture) situation before the beginning of the coonisation), a bit as if there is a gap of one or two centuries between part I and part II, a time laps that affects the context but not the characters, I feel a bit cheated. I would prefer a novel that is more grounded in the historical context.
Not sure I am making myself clear here...

On the other part of your message: it does make sense.
If we go back to the two levels, social and individual, Okonkwo could be a personification of the society. He falls apart in paralell with his society.

And something else, that I might already have mentionned in one of the threads. There is a sense of immutability in part I. The grammatical tense that is used in my translation is simple past, hence an active tense. But it feels like a descriptive tense, as the imperfect tense would be. I don't know if there is the same feeling in the original text.

18Tess_W
Gen 16, 2022, 9:36 pm

I guess a better way to say it, is that the roots of destruction in THIS particular case (novel), are not the doing of the colonials, but in fact of Okwonko's anger management issues.

More than that, people were beginning to question the enforced infanticide of twins.

I know my opinion is probably in the minority, but that's the feeling that I had after reading this book. I think the author's thesis was different, but I do not support it ENTIRELY.

I think the author shows a lot of grace to Okwonko, instead of condemning him, as I often wanted to do...so I had to back away and think of the place and time.

19Majel-Susan
Gen 27, 2022, 10:29 am

Finished with Part 1 now...

Yep, at least now we know who the favoured child is. But, oof, I've got a bad feeling about Ezinma now. Ezinma and her appetite for eggs—cute! The folk stories are fun, too, like How the Tortoise got his shell. I'm a bit puzzled, though, why the priestess had to bring Ezinma on a round of the village, into the sacred cave, and back peacefully to her bed in Ekwefi's hut. It was nice to see Okonkwo genuinely care and worry about someone, though.

In Chapter 13: Big mistake happens here with Okonkwo's gun firing off. It's unfortunate that the funeral leads to yet another death, this one being the dead man's son, but I wonder if there will be any further significance in the fact that this is the funeral of Ezeudu, who warned Okonkwo not to take a hand in the killing of his adoptive son, Ikemefuna. And now as a consequence, Okonkwo and his family are driven out from Umuofia. Obierika, at the end of Part 1, also does some interesting introspection on the difficulties he encounters in what he doesn't understand in Umuofia's traditions.

20raton-liseur
Gen 27, 2022, 10:52 am

>19 Majel-Susan: Interesting that you emphasise the context of the gun firing. And to think about the meaning it can have. Maybe I would see it as a conflict between traditional ways (funeral rites, the temporary banning of the village) and the outside culture (the gun, and what Okonkwo will miss when away from his community).
There are various instances where Chinua Achebe seems to imply that the Igbo community could have chosen to make its traditions evolve/change, or that traditions must be followed with judgement (Ezeudu does not condemn the killing of Ikemefuna, but thinks that Okonkwo should not participate. It's a fine balance).

21librorumamans
Gen 27, 2022, 1:02 pm

>19 Majel-Susan: I'm a bit puzzled, though, why the priestess had to bring Ezinma on a round of the village, into the sacred cave, and back peacefully to her bed in Ekwefi's hut.

It's puzzling to me also and I've been thinking about it. One thought is that Achebe wasn't writing for us but for his own culture, and to people still aware of traditional healing practices this episode might not need explanation. After all, Ezinma recovered, didn't she? (The pandemic has done a number on my brain, so my recall of details is already fading.) Another thought is that the episode shows us a caring side of Okonkwo in that when dawn breaks we find him and his wife holding vigil together on an equal footing; Okonkwo displays some vulnerability. This is new.

If I recall, Okonkwo's gun doesn't fire, but explodes. Nineteenth-century guns did that, especially the poor quality ones that would have made their way to that village. So the child's death is pure accident, but it's an accident that destabilizes the village, making it more vulnerable to the challenge presented by the missionary. Things fall apart before they fall down entirely.

22Majel-Susan
Gen 29, 2022, 1:56 pm

>20 raton-liseur: There are various instances where Chinua Achebe seems to imply that the Igbo community could have chosen to make its traditions evolve/change, or that traditions must be followed with judgement

True! And it seems to me that those are the kinds of developments that the Umuofia people like to reflect on when they compare their traditions to those of their sister villages.

>21 librorumamans: So the child's death is pure accident, but it's an accident that destabilizes the village, making it more vulnerable to the challenge presented by the missionary.

I haven't got to the end of the book yet, but this particular incident didn't strike me as destabilising. It was presented more as one of those things that "just happen." If anything, I felt that it had more symbolic significance in the manner that >20 raton-liseur: pointed out: the gun malfunction that forces Okonkwo and his family from their fatherland, foreshadowed the conflict and Igbo's coming loss of their sense of home and security.

23Majel-Susan
Gen 29, 2022, 1:57 pm

Notes for Ch 14-17, but I'm currently ahead.

I thought it was interesting that Uchendu points out that the people don't travel as much anymore. It is as if they have become increasingly insular.

Hoo boy, the Oracle was right about the white men coming to bring destruction with them... And I only realised later what the "iron horse" referred to. Before that, I was thinking, Wow, that's a long time to keep a horse in armour tied to a tree. And they must be keeping him fed, too.

But I didn't catch what Uchendu meant when he said: "We have albinos among us. Do you not think that they came to our clan by mistake, that they have strayed from their way to a land where everybody is like them?"

I had mixed feelings about the arrival of the missionaries, as while I don't disagree with missionary work in itself, the methods employed historically are often unethical and such work is often intertwined with other ulterior motives. I can appreciate, as well, the intrinsic loss of identity and culture that follows with the landscape of new and changing religions.

It was interesting, though, how Achebe's account of how the missionaries gained ground in the villages---first, by appealing to those that the traditional societies tended to look down on, and then by building their church in the "unclean" ground---mirrored the descriptions in my old Catholic history textbooks, albeit, of course, without the rose-tinted lenses and from the grounds perspective of the Igbo people.

24Tess_W
Gen 31, 2022, 3:41 am

>20 raton-liseur: raton-liseur: There are various instances where Chinua Achebe seems to imply that the Igbo community could have chosen to make its traditions evolve/change, or that traditions must be followed with judgement

AGREED!

25librorumamans
Gen 31, 2022, 1:00 pm

>24 Tess_W: >20 raton-liseur: There are various instances where Chinua Achebe seems to imply that the Igbo community could have chosen to make its traditions evolve/change, or that traditions must be followed with judgement

I'd like to see some other examples of where you see this. Ezeudu's advice, as I read it, arises from his observation of the bond that has formed between the hostage and Okonkwo's family, his son in particular. For Okonkwo to participate in his execution is an offence against the sanctity of the family unit that supersedes the duty to complete the act of retribution that will restore peace between the two villages. Achebe establishes that this culture works in part on the basis of retributive justice and we immediately understand that this will be an important area of conflict with the European culture that will soon arrive. But, given the examples that Achebe provides of arbitrary and retributive European justice, I can't see that Achebe implies that the tribal system is backward.

What Achebe does emphasize is the arrogance and ignorance of European culture that is unwilling and incapable of seeing, let alone understanding, the integrity of the culture that it is invading. I think we as readers should put off our perfect hindsight of what changes in Ibo culture might have smoothed the encounter with Europe and try to imagine its confusion in the face of the unforeseeable.

26raton-liseur
Gen 31, 2022, 2:34 pm

>25 librorumamans: As I said, must be followed with judgement... (this is what you say as well: Ezeudu places the sanctity of family above the retributive justice. Okonkwo does not agree with this hierarchy and considers that performing an act of justice decided by the group is more important than the unit of his own family.)

I do not imply that the tribal system is backward: you do not have to be backward to evolve. I do not say progress, but evolve. Traditions evolve (and the presence of guns or of maize in this culture does show that evolution/change is a fact). If we do not accept that those culture can (and do) evolve, we can say, as one of our former president said "Africa has not entered history".

Finally, a point on which we agree, I do not think I, with my European culture, should be the one deciding which changes should happen and when...
And again, the main topic of the book is clearly the invasion of one culture by another, and how this encounter is violent and damaging. No question about that, and I fully subscribe to this.

27librorumamans
Gen 31, 2022, 3:00 pm

>26 raton-liseur:

Okay. 'Backward' was a poor choice of word on my part. How about:
I can't see that Achebe implies that the tribal system is in need of significant change.

In other words, Okonkwo's personal dysfunction does not extend to or become representative of his culture.

28raton-liseur
Feb 1, 2022, 2:20 am

>27 librorumamans: Again, I think you are overinterpreting what I said. There is room for change, I don't think there is a need for significantchange.
I think that I agree with the fact that Achebe presents a coherent society, with a coherent set of beliefs and rules, that did not need anything that the colonisation brought.
And I think I'll stop trying to explain more, as I feel I'm starting to try to justify the contrary of what is the main feature and message of the book! The room for change hinted in the book, is such a small feature in the whole book, that it feels strange to spend so much time on it.