Things Fall Apart - English quotations

Key quotations for the novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, for my English literature GCSE

Okonkwo was also….

fending for his father’s house

Okwonko knew….

how to kill a man’s spirit

They (Mbaino)…..

treated Okonkwo like a king

Inwardly Okonkwo knew….

that the boys were still too young to understand

He was afraid…

of being thought weak

They [Abame] should have….

armed themselves

He trembled with the desire….

to conquer and subdue

His whole life was dominated…

by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness

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

If ever a man deserved his success…

that man was Okonkwo

Let us not reason like cowards….

if a man comes into my hut and defecates 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.

Okonkwo never showed any emotion openly…

unless it be the emotion of anger

Okonkwo was not a man of thought….

but a man of action

It was not external but lay deep within himself….

It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father

down in his heart….

Okonkwo was not a cruel man

Inwardly, he was repentant….

but he was not the man to go about telling his neighbours that he was in error.

Nwoye was developing….

into a sad-faced youth

But he [Ikemefuna] and Nwoye had become…

so deeply attached to each other

He [Ikemefuna] was like…

an elder brother to Nwoye

Okonkwo was inwardly pleased at his son’s development….

and he knew it was due to Ikemefuna

Nwoye knew that it was right to be masculine and violent….

but somehow he still preferred the stories his mother used to tell.

That boy calls you father…

do not bear a hand in his death

Something seemed…

to give way in him, like the snapping of a tightened bow

Living fire begets….

cold, impotent ash

I don’t know….

He is not my father

If the Oracle said that my son should be killed…

I would neither dispute it nor be the one to do it

Obierika was a man…

who thought about things

He remembered his wife’s twin children, whom he had thrown away…

What crime had they committed?

He who brings kola….

brings life

Never kill a man….

who says nothing

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

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.

We have heard….

both sides of the case

Our duty is not to blame this man or praise that…

but to settle the dispute

One of the greatest crimes a man could commit was to…

unmask an Egwugwu in public

Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly…

and proverbs are the palm oil with which words are eaten

[Example of proverb] 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… the whole country became the brown-earth colour of the vast hungry swarm.

A man was judged…

according to his worth and not according to his father

[Umuofia] never went to war unless….

its case was clear and just and was accepted as such by its Oracle

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.

Ani, the earth goddess … played a greater part in the life of people….

than any other deity. She was the ultimate judge of morality and conduct

The Feast of the New Yam was held every year….

to honour the earth goddess

Abame…

has been wiped out

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

It was not the mad logic of the Trinity that captivated [Nwoye]…

He did not understand it

[Nwoye] felt a relief within…

as the hymn poured into his parched soul

[Osu] they were among….

the strongest adherents of the new faith

This growing feeling was due to Mr Brown…

who was very firm in restraining his flock from provoking the wrath of the clan

Mr Brown came to be respected even by the clan…

because he trod softly on its faith

From the very beginning…

religion and education went hand in hand

[Reverend James Smith] saw things…

as black and white. And black was evil