TFA 1-8

THINGS FALL APART • Chapter One

• • We meet Okonkwo at age 18 during a wrestling match - the moment that he first becomes famous among the local villages.
• • Okonkwo is fighting against an undefeated wrestler called Amalinze the Cat, but in the end, Okonkwo throws the Cat and wins the contest.
• • This wrestling match actually happened twenty years ago, and since then Okonkwo's reputation has grown and spread.
• • Achebe describbes Okonkwo as a pretty intimidating guy. He's physically huge, has an intense face, and tends to use his fists to settle his arguments. And he's impatient with "unsuccessful" men - like this dad.
• • Okonkwo despises his late father, Unoka, for his laziness. Unoka died ten years ago, but essentially was totally irresponsible and was always blowing his money on booze (palm-wine). He was a drink-and-be-merry kind of guy who enjoyed playing the flute, feasting, and celebrating.
• • As a youth, Unoka was a musician and his happiest moments were after the annual harvest, when the whole village would gather to feast and enjoy the music.
• • Later in life though, Unoka was a failure because he was too lazy to work. Instead, he borrowed money from all his friends and could barely afford to feed his family. He become the laughingstock of the village.
• • Flashing back to when Unoka was a live, we see a telling scene. Okay, Unoka's neighbor, comes to visit Unoka and offers him a kola nut, which is a ritual gift. Okay goes through a long-winded, stylized discourse which is a polite way of asking Unoka to pay back the loan of 200 cowries he borrowed from Okoye.
• • Unoka laughs at Okoye and points at his wall, on which he has marked down all his debts. He owes a lot of people a lot of money. He snubs Okoye, saying he means to pay off his big debts first and Okoye is forced to leave empty-handed.
• • Unoka died in debt, which is why Okonkwo is ashamed of him. Okonkwo, unlike his father, established himself as a rich successful yam farmer with three wives and two tribal titles. He seems destined for great things.
• • At the end of the chapter, we are left with a tantalizing snippet of information - Okonkwo is somehow left in charge of an ill-fated boy named Ikemefuna.

THINGS FALL APART • Chapter Two

• • This chapter tells the story of how Okonkwo ends up with Ikemefuna.
• • Okonkwo lies in bed contemplating the meaning of the gong sounded by the town crier late at night. The gong signals that the men must gather in the morning, but Okonkwo fears that something bad has happened.
• • We learn that the people of Umuofia fear night's darkness but will allow their children to play in the moonlight.
• • In the morning, the whole village learns that last night's gong was sounded for the death of a daughter of the clan. She was killed at the market by a neighboring clan and now Okonkwo wants to go to war to get revenge.
• • The neighboring clans, however, want to avoid war because they fear the Umuofia. When Okonkwo arrives in the neighboring village of the offending tribe, they offer a peaceful solution of a ritual sacrifice of a boy and a virgin girl to the Umuofia Clan.
• • The Umuofia elders decide that the virgin girl should be given to the man whose wife was just murdered. The boy's fate goes undecided, so Okonkwo takes him home in the meantime.
• • Ikemefuna ends up living in Okonkwo's household for 3 years.
• • We learn that Okonkwo rules his family with an iron first and his wives live in fear of him. He's got a pretty bad temper. Achebe does a bit of psychoanalysis on Okonkwo and esssentially his aggression stems from a deep-seeded, subconscious fear of being a failure like his father.
• • Okonkwo recalls how a childhood friend called Okonkwo's father agbala - meaning woman or man without a title.
• • In an attempt to be completely unlike his father, Okonkwo works hard tilling the fields until dark. His efforts keep his family prosperous.
• • As you might expect from a man with three wives, Okonkwo has a child, a twelve-year-old son named Nwoye. Okonkwo, still consumed with fear, beats and chastises his son frequently because he's worried that the boy is lazy. Not a good move.
• ​​​​​​​ • At the end of the chapter, the narrative switches to Ikemefuna's point of view. Okonkwo hands the boy over to his first wife and orders her to take care of him.​​​​​​​

THINGS FALL APART • Chapter Three

• We begin to get more insights into Okonkwo’s past. Unlike his peers, he started out poor and didn’t inherit anything from his dad, who was always in debt.
• A common story told in Okonkwo’s village is about Okonkwo’s father, Unoka, visiting the tribe’s oracle, Agbala, to discover why he has such bad harvests.
• The narrative flashes back to Unoka speaking with the oracle many years ago when Okonkwo was still a boy.
• Agbala’s priestess interrupts as Unoka begins explaining himself. She says that he has no one but himself to blame for his bad harvests. She points out his laziness in contrast to his neighbors’ admirable work ethic and sends him away with simple advice: “go home and work like a man.”
• Eventually Unoka gets sick with a disease which causes his stomach to swell. This disease is considered an abomination to the earth so Unoka is not allowed to die at home, nor does ritual allow his body allowed to be buried. He dies and rots under a tree in the Evil Forest.
• Even before his father died, Okonkwo was forced to blaze his own trail to wealth and respect because lazy Unoka could give his son nothing.
• To create his own wealth and reputation, Okonkwo goes to a wealthy man – Nwakibie – and makes polite offerings of palm-wine and kola nut and asks for a favor. Essentially, Okonkwo makes a sharecropping agreement with the wealthy man where he only gets one-third of his harvest and Nwakibie gets the rest.
• Nwakibie is unexpectedly generous to Okonkwo, giving him twice the number of seeds expected because, unlike many young men, Okonkwo isn’t afraid of hard work.
• Okonkwo works tirelessly to harvest the yams while his mother and sisters work their own crops. Okonkwo is angry because all this work is going towards feeding his father’s household (because his father is lazy) instead of building up his own future.
• The year turns out to be a disaster. There is a long period of drought, killing the first batch of Okonkwo’s yams. After he plants the remainder, there is endless flooding so the few yams that actually make it to harvest are rotting.
• But Okonkwo survives the tragic year and vows that he can survive anything due to his “inflexible will.”

THINGS FALL APART • Chapter Four

• Because of his personal merits, Okonkwo has quickly risen to be one of the most highly ranked men in his clan.
• During a meeting of kinsmen, Okonkwo proves himself to have little sympathy for men who have been less successful than himself. When a titleless man contradicts him, he says, “this meeting is for men.”
• The other men make Okonkwo apologize to the lower-ranked man and tell Okonkwo that he should be humble and have sympathy for those who are less fortunate.
• The narrator, however, assures the reader that Okonkwo hasn’t been successful simply because he’s a lucky man; he’s worked hard to rise from poverty to his current position.
• The clan respects Okonkwo for his hard work and strong-will, which is why they selected him to go to the offending village to declare war (that was when he ended up taking Ikemefuna and the virgin girl instead).
• The clan assigns Ikemefuna to Okonkwo’s care until they decide what to do with him.
• When Ikemefuna moves in to Okonkwo’s house, he’s terrified and refuses to eat until he’s taken home. Okonkwo won’t put up with the boy’s hunger strike and stands over Ikemefuna with a threatening club, forcing the boy to eat his meal.
• After the force-feeding session, Ikemefuna is sick for a while, but once he’s healthy again, he’s turns out to be a happy, lively boy.
• Ikemefuna is well-liked in Okonkwo’s household. He develops a bond with Nwoye and Okonkwo’s first wife, the mother of Nwoye. Even Okonkwo comes to think of Ikemefuna as a son, though he never outwardly shows his affection (surprise, surprise).
• Ikemefuna came to Umuofia around the start of the Week of Peace, the happy interval between harvest and planting.
• During this time, however, Okonkwo breaks the peace. He beats his third wife, Ojiugo, for not arriving home in time to cook his midday meal. By beating his wife, he breaks the law of the Week of Peace. Ezeani, the priest of the earth goddess, comes to punish him.
• The priest bashes Okonkwo for violating the rules of the sacred week and possibly making the earth goddess angry. Then he gives Okonkwo instructions for righting his wrong: Okonkwo must bring a sacrifice to the goddess’s shrine.
• Okonkwo does as he is told and really does feel repentant, but is too proud to reveal that to his neighbors. So his neighbors think that he’s too proud to respect the gods.
• Town gossip reveals that transgression during the Week of Peace rarely happens, so this is big news. Historically, the punishment has also been much more severe.
• After the Week of Peace ends, new crops are planted. Okonkwo starts the arduous process of planting yams with the help of Nwoye and Ikemefuna.
• While preparing the seed yams, he constantly criticizes the boys for not preparing them correctly and threatening them aggressively.
• Okonkwo knows that the boys are too young to really be able to plant yams well, but he’s harsh with them because he wants them to turn into tough men.
• After much hard work planting and tending the yams, the rainy season arrives and the boys and Okonkwo remain indoors.
• During his free time, Ikemefuna tells folktales to Nwoye. This is a pretty happy time for Ikemefuna and he finally feels at home in Okonkwo’s household.

THINGS FALL APART • Chapter Five

• The chapter opens three days before the Feast of the New Yam, and all of the villagers are excited.
• Okonkwo and his family are preparing for the holiday feast, to which Okonkwo will invite the families of his three wives.
• Instead of feeling excited about spending time with his three sets of in-laws, Okonkwo is on edge. Unlike his dad, he’s not a happy-go-lucky party guy. Essentially, he’s a workaholic and would rather not be sitting around.
• Okonkwo’s wives prepare for the festival and feast by cleaning the house, repainting the walls, and primping themselves and the children with body paint and nice hairdos.
• Everyone seems happy except for Okonkwo, who can’t suppress his bad mood and takes it out on his second wife, Ekwefi. He accuses her of killing a banana tree (when it’s not anywhere near dead), beats her, and then threatens her with a gun when she talks back.
• The rest of the family is too scared to protest.
• Despite Okonkwo’s scary, abusive outburst, the feast still goes smoothly. Okonkwo’s in-laws arrive with a bunch of palm-wine.
• On the second day of the festival, wrestling matches are scheduled, much to Ekwefi’s delight. She fell in love with Okonkwo during the opening match of the book, when he threw the Cat.
• Once the village beauty, Ekwefi couldn’t marry Okonkwo because at the time, he was too poor to pay her bride price. So she ran away from home, disobeying her husband, and went to live with Okonkwo.
• Ekwefi has one daughter, a ten-year-old girl named Ezinma. She is a strange child who always speaks her mind, asks lots of questions, and even calls her mother by her first name.
• Ekwefi and Ezinma are preparing food on the day of the wrestling match when Okonkwo’s first wife comes to ask for Ezinma to bring her a few live coals.
• Ezinma makes Okonkwo’s first wife a fire using the coals and some sticks that she gathered.
• As Ezinma heads back to her mother’s hut, she hears the drums sounding in the ilo (which is like a town plaza where events take place). The drums signal that the wrestling will start later, it’s a kind of build up to the main event.
• As Ekwefi and Okonkwo’s first wife prepare yams, Ezinma and the women hear Obiageli, the daughter of Okonkwo’s first wife, crying.
• Ikemefuna and the first wife’s children come marching in with dinner pots, but Obiageli has no pot and is crying.
• Obiageli broke her pot while showing off to the other children; she tried to pretend she was a grown woman and carry the pot on her head. However, the little girl makes up a sad story to tell her mother, and though the other children know it’s not true, Ikemefuna keeps them silent.
• Ezinma brings Okonkwo the dinner dish that Ekwefi made. Obiageli brings food that her mother prepared, and Nkechi, the daughter of Okonkwo’s third wife, brings another dish.
• Ezinma is inquisitive with her father, and although he acts stern and unemotional around her, he’s secretly has a soft spot for the girl.
• As the chapter closes, the drums are still sounding.

THINGS FALL APART • Chapter Six