Studied by 65 people
Inwardly, …
he was repentant [for breaking Week of Peace]
Inwardly…
Okonkwo knew that the boys were still too young to understand fully the difficult art of preparing seed-yams
Even Okonkwo became very fond of the boy - …
inwardly of course
Okonkwo never showed any emotion openly, …
unless it be the emotion of anger
[Okonkwo:] ‘If you split another yam of this size, …
I shall break your jaw.’
Okonkwo was inwardly pleased…
at his son’s development, and he knew it was due to Ikemefuna
[Okonkwo to Obierika:] ‘If I had a son like him [Maduka]…
I should be happy.’
Okonkwo was also fending…
for his father’s house
Okonkwo knew how…
to kill a man’s spirit
They [Mbaino] treated Okonkwo…
like a king
He was afraid of…
being thought weak
[Okonkwo:] ‘They [Abame] should…
have armed themselves’
He trembled with the desire…
to conquer and subdue
dominated by fear, …
the fear of failure and weakness
‘Let us not reason like cowards,’ said Okonkwo. …
‘If a man comes into my hut and defaecates on the floor, what do I do? Do I shut my eyes? No! I take a stick and break his head. That is what a man does.’
When he walked, his heels hardly touched the ground and he seemed to walk on springs, …
as if he was going to pounce on somebody. And he did pounce on people quite often.
Okonkwo felt a cold shudder run through him at the terrible prospect, like the prospect of annihilation. …
He saw himself and his father crowding round their ancestral shrine waiting in vain for worship and sacrifice and finding but ashes of bygone days, and his children the while praying to the white man’s god.
If ever a man deserved his success, that man was Okonkwo. …
At an early age he had achieved fame as the greatest wrestler in all the land. That was not luck. At the most one could say that his chi or personal god was good. But the Ibo people have a proverb that when a man says yes his chi says yes also. Okonkwo said yes very strongly; so his chi agreed.
[Uchendu to Okonkwo:] ‘But I fear for you young people because you do not understand how strong is the bond of kinship. …
You do not know what it is to speak with one voice. And what is the result? An abominable religion has settled among you. A man can now leave his father and his brothers. He can curse the gods of his fathers and his ancestors, like a hunter’s dog that suddenly goes mad and turns on his master. I fear for you; I fear for the clan.’
Okonkwo was not a man of thought…
but a man of action
Okonkwo was deeply grieved… He mourned for the clan, …
which he saw breaking up and falling apart, and he mourned for the warlike men of Umuofia
‘The world is large,’ said Okonkwo. …
‘I have even heard that in some tribes a man’s children belong to his wife and her family.’
And indeed he was possessed…
by the fear of his father’s contemptible life and shameful death
Nwoye was developing…
into a sad-faced youth
But he and Nwoye had become…
so deeply attached to each other
He was like an elder brother to Nwoye, …
and from the very first seemed to have kindled a new fire in the younger boy
Nwoye knew that it was right to be masculine and violent, …
but somehow he still preferred the stories his mother used to tell
Nwoye always wondered who Nnadi was…
and why he should live all by himself, cooking and eating. In the end he decided that Nnadi must live in that land of Ikemefuna’s favourite story where the ant holds his court in splendour and the sands dance for ever.
[Ogbuefi Ezeudu to Okonkwo:] ‘That boy calls you father. …
Do not bear a hand in his death.’
Nwoye knew that Ikemefuna had been killed, …
and something seemed to give way inside him, like the snapping of a tightened bow
[Okonkwo about Nwoye joining the missionaries:] Living fire…
begets cold, impotent ash
[Obierika to Okonkwo:] ‘If the Oracle said…
that my son should be killed I would neither dispute it nor be the one to do it.’
[Obierika to his relations:] ‘I sometimes think he [Okonkwo]…
is too sharp’
Obierika was a man…
who thought about things
[Obierika to Okonkwo:] ‘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.’
‘There is no story that is not true,’ said Uchendu [Okonkwo’s uncle]. …
‘The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others.’
[Unoka to Okonkwo:] ‘You have a manly and a proud heart. …
A proud heart can survive a general failure because such a failure does not prick its pride. It is more difficult and more bitter when a man fails alone.’
[Uchendu:] ‘Never kill a man…
who says nothing.’
[Obierika about Okonkwo:] Why should a man suffer so grievously…
for an offence he had committed inadvertently? But although he thought for a long time he found no answer. He was merely led into greater complexities. He remembered his wife’s twin children, whom he had thrown away. What crime had they committed?
[Uchendu to Okonkwo and relations:] ‘A man who calls his kinsmen to a feast does not do so…
to save them from starving. … We come together because it is good for kinsmen to do so.’
Okonkwo was ruled…
by one passion - to hate everything that his father Unoka had loved. One of those things was gentleness and another was idleness.
[Egwugwu:] ‘We have heard…
both sides of the case.’
[Egwugwu:] ‘Our duty is not to blame…
this man or to praise that, but to settle the dispute.’
One of the greatest crimes a man could commit was to unmask…
an Egwugwu in public, or to say or do anything which might reduce its immortal prestige in the eyes of the uninitiated. And this was what Enoch did.'
Among the Ibo the art of conversation…
is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten.
[Okonkwo to Nwakibie:] ‘As our people say, a man who pays respect…
to the great paves the way for his own greatness.’
And at last, the locusts did descend. …
They settled on every tree and on every blade of grass; they settled on the roofs and covered the bare ground. Mighty tree branches broke away under them, and the whole country became the brown-earth colour of the vast, hungry swarm.
As the elders said, if one finger…
brought oil it soiled the others
[Obierika to Uchendu and Okonkwo:] ‘Abame has been…
wiped out.’
[Obierika to Okonkwo:] ‘I forgot to tell you another thing which the Oracle said. …
It said that other white men were on their way. They were locusts, it said, and that first man was their harbinger sent to explore the terrain.’
It was one of those gay and rollicking tunes of evangelism…
which had the power of plucking at silent and dusty chords in the heart of an Ibo man
It was the poetry of the new religion, something felt…
in the marrow. The hymn about brothers who sat in darkness and in fear seemed to answer a vague and persistent question that haunted his young soul - the question of the twins crying in the bush and the question of Ikemefuna who was killed. He felt a relief within as the hymn poured into his parched soul.
The two outcasts [osu] shaved off their hair, …
and soon they were among the strongest adherents of the new faith
The Christians had grown in number…
and were now a small community of men, women and children, self-assured and confident
Mr Brown came to be respected…
even by the clan, because he trod softly on its faith
He [Reverend Smith] 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. He spoke in his sermons about sheep and goats and about wheat and tares. He believed in slaying the prophets of Baal.
Fortunately, among these people a man was judged…
according to his worth and not according to the worth of his father
Age was respected among his people, …
but achievement was revered. As the elders said, if a child washed his hands he could eat with kings.
And in fairness to Umuofia it should be recorded that it never went to war unless…
its case was clear and just and was accepted as such by its Oracle
‘The market of Umuike is a wonderful place,’ said the young man who had been sent by Obierika to buy the giant goat. …
‘There are so many people on it that if you threw up a grain of sand it would not find a way to fall to earth again.’
Ani played a greater part in the life of the people than any other deity. …
She was the ultimate judge of morality and conduct.
The New Yam Festival was thus an occasion…
for joy throughout Umuofia
[Egwugwu to Okeke the interpreter about Reverend Smith:] ‘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.’
Note 
Flashcard (50)