PART 2
Okonkwo´s exile forces him to his motherland, Mbanta. The last time he visited was at his mother´s burial. His new kinsmen gave him yams and land so that he could try to rebuild his fortune, but Okonkwo is held down by a great sorrow. His only wish in life was to become one of the lords of clan, which he had achieved before it was taken away from him and he was sent away. Now he felt like he had nothing, and that his chi, his personal god, was against him. Some time later, during the ceremony completing one of his cousins´ marriage, Okonkwo´s uncle, the oldest kinsman stood up to talk to Okonkwo. He told him that the reason why Okonkwo was sent back to his motherland was to be comforted, like a child is comforted by its mother. He then told Okonkwo to stop despairing, he should rather bend his efforts to provide for his wives and children.
After Okonkwo had lived in Mbanta for two years, his friend Obierika came to visit. He brought money for Okonkwo from the yams he had sold. Obierika, Okonkwo and Uchendu (Okonkwo´s uncle) sat down that night to talk and drink palm wine. Uchendu expressed his discontent because none of the kinsmen of the different clans knew each other any longer, and he started bragging about all the men he knew from different clans. But when he started talking about the Abame clan, Obierika interrupted him. He told Okonkwo and Uchendu that the Abame clan was gone. They were all killed by white men riding metal horses. Okonkwo had heard stories about white men capturing people and selling them as slaves on the other side of the world, but he was not sure whether the stories were true.
Another two years passed until Obierika went to visit Okonkwo again. By that time the missionaries had come to Umuofia and among them Obierika had noticed Nwoye. Nwoye had told Obierika that he no longer was Okonkwo´s son. This is why Obierika went to Mbanta to visit Okonkwo. He wanted to know why Okonkwo had broken all bonds with his son. Okonkwo told Obierika about the day a white missionary and his African evangelists came to Mbanta. Most of the villagers had scoffed at their religious stories about one God who had created all things and about the Holy Trinity. But a few had been attracted by the stories. Nwoye was one of them. He felt like this new religion offered hope of better things.
The missionaries asked for land to build a church. The elders had granted them a plot in the evil forest. They knew that whoever stayed in the evil forest died after a few days because of the sinister spirits that lived there. But to the villagers` surprise, days passed and nothing happened. Thus more and more of the villagers converted to the new religion. Nwoye, Okonkwo´s son was one of them. This made Okonkwo furious. He asked himself how he, the “flaming fire”, could have gotten such a weak son? He came to the conclusion that his wife must have cheated him, but then he remembered how much Nwoye looked like his grandfather, Unoka.
The gradually increasing strength of the mission led to violence between the two sides. The Christians preached that all men are equal and were accordingly welcoming the outcasts of the tribe to join their faith, something the villagers despised. The indignation boiled over when a convert killed the sacred python. Okonkwo was all for using violence, but the elders decided that they were going to exclude the converts instead, and take away their privileges. But when the man who killed the python died the next day, the villagers saw this like the gods had proven that they were still powerful.
Okonkwo´s time of exile in Mbanta was soon to end. Although he was thankful to the kinsmen of Mbanta, he was also bitter because he knew he could have done better in Umuofia during the last seven years. To express his gratitude, he arranged a giant feast with food for the whole village.
Analysis:
When Okonkwo returns to his motherland he is sad and feels like his chi is against him. His exile forces him to spend time in a more feminine place, where he has come to be comforted by the spirit of his dead mother. At least this is what the kinsmen think. But Okonkwo is unwilling to admit to the feminine side of his personality.
When the missionaries came to Mbanta, they were not met with violence like in the Abame clan where a war broke out and ended up killing every one in the clan. The villagers do not seem threatened by the Christians. Not even when the Christians claim that their gods are false. Okonkwo on the other hand is all for violent action and thinks that the Abame clan should have armed themselves so they could have killed all the whites. Okonkwo´s violent nature seems to clash with the Ibo values. From the beginning of the novel it is stated that in the Ibo culture, they try to find a peaceful solution before a violent solution. Uchendo expresses this social value by saying that the Abame clan should never have killed the first white man in the first place, before they even knew the man´s intentions.
After ikemefuna´s death, Nwoye had felt lost for a long time, but because he was a man and had Okonkwo as a father, he never had the opportunity to express his feelings. When the new religion comes along, Nwoye starts to hope for a better future and this brings him into enlightenment. Christianity gave him the answers the Ibo religion never provided for him.
Nwoye´s content with the new religion is not the same for his father, Okonkwo. After losing Ikemefuna, then losing his home and leadership in the old clans, Okonkwo feels like his whole world is crumbling around him. He also hates the new faith for destructing the traditional Ibo society. I also think Okonkwo views Christianity as a threat because it undermines the cultural values of his accomplishments. In contrast to the Ibo religion, all men are equal in Christianity.
I think it is ironic how Okonkwo wants to act violently to preserve their cultural values when their cultural values are to act peacefully.
As a I wrote in an earlier post, Achebe is himself the son of Nigerian Christians so it is impossible not to think about his own situation. He does however not describe neither the Christians nor the Ibo people as “good” or “evil”.
THINGS FALL APART 