The white man speaks to the village through an interpreter, who, we learn later, is named Mr. He accuses them of worshipping false gods of wood and stone.
The missionaries have come, he tells his audience, to persuade the villagers to leave their false gods and accept the one true God. The villagers, however, do not understand how the Holy Trinity can be accepted as one God. They also cannot see how God can have a son and not a wife. The missionaries then burst into evangelical song.
Okonkwo thinks that these newcomers must be insane, but Nwoye is instantly captivated. He remains unwilling to admit to, or come to terms with, the feminine side of his personality.
Like Unoka, Uchendu reminds Okonkwo that he does not suffer alone. Uchendu laments the loss of five of his wives, openly expressing his strong attachment to the women who have shared his life and borne his children. Uchendu also values wisdom, intelligence, and experience in a wife. Each and every death has caused him pain. Although we would not know it from Okonkwo, a father grieves for lost children just as a mother does. The introduction of the European missionaries is not presented as a tragic event—it even contains some comical elements.
And the missionaries do not forcibly thrust Christianity on the villagers. Previous Next. Uchendu and his sons help Okonkwo build a compound and farm. The family even pitches in to give Okonkwo seed-yams to start a farm with the coming rain season. Okonkwo, deeply perturbed by his exile, works as hard as always to prosper, but his heart is no longer in it.
All his ambition to eventually become a great leader of the clan has been ripped away. He believes his personal god or chi was not destined for great things.
Two days later, Uchendu gathers his family including Okonkwo around him. Uchendu tells his family why Okonkwo is now living among them. Uchendu points out that many people suffer more serious setbacks than a seven-year exile. In this chapter, Achebe presents a paradox about the manly and womanly aspects of Okonkwo's circumstances. Okonkwo begins his exile deeply discouraged and unmotivated. While striving for even greater manliness, he committed a female murder — that is, he accidentally killed a boy during the funeral ceremony.
Making things worse in his mind , he has been exiled to the woman's side of his family. He thus feels that this transition is an extraordinary challenge to his manliness. His uncle reminds him, though, in the presence of his own large family, that Okonkwo should use the nurturing womanly quality of his motherland, accept his situation which is, in fact, far less devastating than it could be , and recover.
Okonkwo needs to maintain a positive, responsible leadership including male and female qualities of his own family in preparation for their eventual return to Umuofia. The womanly aspect of his mother's village is not to be ignored while Okonkwo waits for the right to return to his own manly village. In earlier chapters, Okonkwo acknowledged the vital role of chi in his life. In this chapter, he seems to realize that his chi "was not made for great things" — a reluctant admission that he may not achieve everything he wants because his fate is predetermined.
His acceptance of this possible limitation, however, does not last. With the description of the isa-ifi ceremony, this chapter completes the reader's view of the complex Igbo marriage rituals.
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