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Things Fall Apart - Part Three - Chapter Twenty-Twenty Five - Excerpts

Okonkwo is frustrated that the Umuofia people have lost the ability to fight against the white men. Obierika explains that it is too late to drive them out since many of their own people have joined the white man's religion and government. The white man's religion has brought both good and bad changes, like increased trade but also division among the clansmen. The new missionary, Reverend James Smith, takes a harsher approach than his predecessor Mr. Brown and wants to destroy the local shrines. At a shrine, the men tell Smith to leave them alone and that they will not harm him, but will destroy the shrine themselves. When a man kills a messenger and hangs himself,

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60 views3 pages

Things Fall Apart - Part Three - Chapter Twenty-Twenty Five - Excerpts

Okonkwo is frustrated that the Umuofia people have lost the ability to fight against the white men. Obierika explains that it is too late to drive them out since many of their own people have joined the white man's religion and government. The white man's religion has brought both good and bad changes, like increased trade but also division among the clansmen. The new missionary, Reverend James Smith, takes a harsher approach than his predecessor Mr. Brown and wants to destroy the local shrines. At a shrine, the men tell Smith to leave them alone and that they will not harm him, but will destroy the shrine themselves. When a man kills a messenger and hangs himself,

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Hanna Trb
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Things Fall Apart/ Part Three: Chapter Twenty-Twenty Five/

Excerpts
Chapter Twenty
Okonkwo said, almost to himself. "But I cannot understand these things you tell
me. What is it that has happened to our people? Why have they lost the power
to fight?"
"Have you not heard how the white man wiped out Abame?" asked Obierika.
"I have heard," said Okonkwo. "But I have also heard that Abame people were
weak and foolish. Why did they not fight back? Had they no guns and
machetes? We would be cowards to compare ourselves with the men of Abame.
Their fathers had never dared to stand before our ancestors. We must fight these
men and drive them from the land."
"It is already too late," said Obierika sadly. "Our own men and our sons have
joined the ranks of the stranger. They have joined his religion and they help to
uphold his government. If we should try to drive out the white men in Umuofia
we should find it easy. There are only two of them. But what of our own people
who are following their way and have been given power? They would go to
Umuru and bring the soldiers, and we would be like Abame." He paused for a
long time and then said: "I told you on my last visit to Mbanta how they hanged
Aneto."
………………………………..
"Does the white man understand our custom about land?"
"How can he when he does not even speak our tongue? But he says that our
customs are bad, and our own brothers who have taken up his religion also say
that our customs are bad. How do you think we can fight when our own brothers
have turned against us? The white man is very clever. He came quietly and
peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed
him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like
one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen
apart."

Chapter Twenty One


The white man had indeed brought a lunatic religion, but he had also built a
trading store and for the first time palm-oil and kernel became things of great
price, and much money flowed into Umuofia.
………………………………..
Mr. Brown preached against such excess of zeal. Everything was possible, he
told his energetic flock, but everything was not expedient. And so Mr. Brown
1
came to be respected even by the clan, because he trod softly on its faith. He
made friends with some of the great men of the clan and on one of his frequent
visits to the neighbouring villages he had been presented with a carved elephant
tusk, which was a sign of dignity and rank. One of the great men in that village
was called Akunna and he had given one of his sons to be taught the white
man's knowledge in Mr. Brown's school.
Whenever Mr. Brown went to that village he spent long hours with Akunna in
his obi talking through an interpreter about religion. Neither of them succeeded
in converting the other but they learned more about their different beliefs.
Chapter Twenty Two
Mr. Brown's successor was the Reverend James Smith, and he was a different
kind of man. He condemned openly Mr. Brown's policy of compromise and
accommodation. He saw things as black and white. And black was evil. He saw
the world as a battlefield in which the children of light were locked in mortal
conflict with the sons of darkness.
………………………………..
"Tell the white man that we will not do him any harm," he said to the
interpreter. "Tell him to go back to his house and leave us alone. We liked his
brother who was with us before. He was foolish, but we liked him, and for his
sake we shall not harm his brother. But this shrine which he built must be
destroyed. We shall no longer allow it in our midst. It has bred untold
abominations and we have come to put an end to it." He turned to his comrades.
"Fathers of Umuofia, I salute you." and they replied with one guttural voice. He
turned again to the missionary. "You can stay with us if you like our ways. You
can worship your own god. It is good that a man should worship the gods and
the spirits of his fathers. Go back to your house so that you may not be hurt. Our
anger is great but we have held it down so that we can talk to you." …. "We
cannot leave the matter in his hands because he does not understand our
customs, just as we do not understand his. We say he is foolish because he does
not know our ways, and perhaps he says we are foolish because we do not know
his. Let him go away."
Chapter twenty Five
The District Commissioner changed instantaneously. The resolute administrator
in him gave way to the student of primitive customs.
"Why can't you take him down yourselves?" he asked.
"It is against our custom," said one of the men. "It is an abomination for a man
to take his own life. It is an offence against the Earth, and a man who commits it

2
will not be buried by his clansmen. His body is evil, and only strangers may
touch it. That is why we ask your people to bring him down, because you are
strangers."
"Will you bury him like any other man?" asked the Commissioner.
"We cannot bury him. Only strangers can. We shall pay your men to do it.
When he has been buried we will then do our duty by him. We shall make
sacrifices to cleanse the desecrated land."
………………………………..
The Commissioner went away, taking three or four of the soldiers with him. In
the many years in which he had toiled to bring civilization to different parts of
Africa he had
learned a number of things. One of them was that a District Commissioner must
never attend to such undignified details as cutting a hanged man from the tree.
Such attention would give the natives a poor opinion of him. In the book which
he planned to write he would stress that point. As he walked back to the court
he thought about that book. Every day brought him some new material. The
story of this man who had killed a messenger and hanged himself would make
interesting reading. One could almost write a whole chapter on him. Perhaps not
a whole chapter but a reasonable paragraph, at any rate. There was so much else
to include, and one must be firm in cutting out details. He had already chosen
the title of the book, after much thought:
The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.

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