Things Fall Apart

The narrator returns to Ezinma’s story on an “impenetrably dark” night (95). The night is also “silent except for the shrill cry of insects” and “the sound of the wooden pestle” from a neighbor’s late-night cooking. From his hut, where he enjoys his snuff, Okonkwo can hear his wives and children tell folk stories; the narrator focuses on the story that Ekwefi tells to Ezinma.

In Ekwefi’s story, Tortoise begs the birds to take him along to a feast in the sky. They elect him as spokesman of the party “because he was a great orator,” and he convinces them that at “a great feast like this,” everyone must take a new name (97). Cunning Tortoise calls himself “[a]ll of you,” thereby giving himself rights to “the best part of the food” and wine when the host offers the feast to “all of you” (98). The birds, bitter and hungry, depart and take back the wings they lent Tortoise so that he could fly; only Parrot is willing to give Tortoise’s wife the message that she should leave soft things out so that he can descend comfortably.

Parrot tells Tortoise’s wife to leave out hard things, and she follows directions. When Tortoise falls to earth, “his shell [breaks] into pieces” and must be stuck back into the “not smooth” shape it is in today (99). In response, Ezinma begins a new tale about the Tortoise, but cries from Chielo, Agbala’s priestess, cut her short.

Chielo directs her prophecy at Okonkwo. Repeatedly, she asks for Ezinma to visit because “Agbala [wants] to see his daughter,” but Okonkwo “[pleads]” to keep her home (100). Chielo reprimands Okonkwo for “exchanging words with Agbala” and then walks to Ekwefi’s tent to request Ezinma (101). The priestess takes Ezinma to Agbala’s “house in the hills and the caves” on her back, for “a baby on its mother’s back does not know that the way is long” (101). Though others warn her against it, Ekwefi follows Chielo.

Tripping and falling, Ekwefi trails close behind the priestess, using her voice as a guide in the dark night. At one point, Chielo hears someone following her and curses the follower in the name of Agbala. But Ekwefi continues until they reach the farthest village in the clan, Umuachi. Then they head to the caves. In the delirious shapes of the forest, Ekwefi recognizes that “Chielo [is] not a woman” but “the priestess of Agbala” in the night (107).

As Chielo enters the shrine, Ekwefi steps carefully, “already beginning to doubt the wisdom of her coming” (107). She must stop when Chielo and Ezinma “[disappear] through a hole hardly big enough to pass a hen” (108). Eventually, a man with a machete arrives, setting her into a panic; the man, it turns out, is Okonkwo, who tries to send her home for the night. Ekwefi insists on staying, and as they stand together, Ekwefi reflects on the drama of their young, past love.

The morning after Chielo takes Ezinma, the neighborhood buzzes with excitement for Obierika’s daughter, Akeuke’s, uri celebration. Women and children, including Okonkwo’s wives and children, gather to help the bride and her mother cook for the village. Ekwefi, tired, rouses herself late, as Chielo returned Ezinma to her bed just before morning. She did not seem to see the girl’s parents and she did not confront them. Eventually, Ezinma awakens, and after eating breakfast, the two head to the women’s gathering.

Achebe’s narrator enters Okonkwo’s mind, explaining his side of the previous night’s adventures. Okonkwo had waited “a reasonable and manly interval” before heading to the shrine but grew “gravely worried” when he realized that Chielo and Ezinma (and Ekwefi) were likely visiting all the other villages before the shrine (112).

The narrator returns to Obierika’s “busy” compound (112). The men slaughter goats, except for “the fattest of all,” which Obierika “had sent one of his relatives all the way to Umuike to buy,” for Umuike has the largest market (113). Suddenly, everyone hears “a cry in the distance”: “The one that uses its tail to drive flies away!” (114). All but a few women run to corral an escaped cow and return it to its owner, who must pay a fine.

Later in the day, “the first two pots of palm-wine [arrive] from Obierika’s in-laws,” and the women drink some “to help them in their cooking” (115). Obierika’s son sweeps the floor as his female relatives finish preparing his daughter for the ceremony. Then Obierika’s family, including Okonkwo, arrives.

The men share snuff, discuss the number of jars of palm-wine they anticipate, and admire Obierika’s goat. Eventually, the in-laws come, bearing palm-wine; they start with 25 pots, then take a pause, then bring more wine until 50 pots fill the room: “Ibe, the suitor, and the elders of his family” arrive and sit “in a half-moon […] completing a circle with their hosts” (116). The bride, led by her mother, processes into, around, and back out of the room. The men discuss and finalize the marriage, and all celebrate with “a great feast” (118).

At night, the tribe sings and dances, praising each man in turn. Girls arrive to dance, and eventually the bride joins them with “a cock in her right hand,” which she gives to the musicians before she dances (118). They are “all gay” as the music plays and the girl dances (118). When the guests leave, they take the bride with them “to spend seven market weeks with her suitor’s family”; they greet the prominent men of the village, and Okonkwo gives them two cocks.

The ekwe, a “hollowed-out wooden instrument,” wakes Umuofia up with a message: “Somebody [is] dead” (120). “The faint and distant wailing of women” and the “full-chested lamentation” of men combine with “the esoteric language of the ekwe” (120). The ekwe eventually announces that Ezeudu is dead; Okonkwo remembers that the last time he saw the old man, Ezeudu warned him to “bear no hand” in Ikemefuna’s death (121).

Ezeudu’s is “a warrior’s funeral,” attended by “all the clan” (121). Ancestral spirits, egwugwus, appear throughout the day’s ceremonies. Some are fearsome, but some are “quite harmless” (122). The funeral is evidence that “the land of the living [is] not far removed from the domain of the ancestors” (122).

The funeral party awaits the moment, after dark, when Ezeudu will be buried under the light of “a glowing brand” (123). He was a man with three titles and a bearer of great honor, so his burial is sacred. But before that ceremony, drums and gunfire introduce a one-handed spirit, who compels Ezeudu’s spirit: “If a man caused [his death], do not allow him a moment’s rest” (123).

In the chaos of gunfire that should be Ezeudu’s last salute, Okonkwo’s gun explodes. A piece of that gun pierces Ezeudu’s 16-year-old son, and “a cry of agony and shouts of horror” silence the ceremony (124). The ensuing confusion is unlike anything Umuofia has experienced, and the only thing he can do is flee.

Because the crime of killing a clansperson was “female,” or “inadvertent,” he might be able to return in seven years (124). Okonkwo and his family pack their things and escape to Mbanta, his motherland, and when the day breaks, Ezeudu’s family arrives “in garbs of war” to destroy his compound; “it [is] the justice of the earth goddess, and they [are] merely her messengers” (125). Even Obierika, a great friend, joins the group, which aims to “merely [cleanse]” the land that Okonkwo’s accident polluted (125). But after the incident, Obierika wonders why such wrath must follow accidental offenses.