Chapters 1–3

Summary: Chapter 1

Okonkwo is a wealthy and respected warrior of the Umuofia clan, a lower Nigerian tribe that
is part of a consortium of nine connected villages, including Okonkwo’s village, Iguedo. In
his youth, he brought honor to his village by beating Amalinze the Cat in a wrestling contest.
Until his match with Okonkwo, the Cat had been undefeated for seven years. Okonkwo is
completely unlike his now deceased father, Unoka, who feared the sight of blood and was
always borrowing and losing money, which meant that his wife and children often went
hungry. Unoka was, however, a skilled flute player and had a gift for, and love of, language.

Summary: Chapter 2

One night, the town crier rings the ogene, or gong, and requests that all of the clansmen
gather in the market in the morning. At the gathering, Ogbuefi Ezeugo, a noted orator,
announces that someone from the village of Mbaino murdered the wife of an Umuofia
tribesman while she was in their market. The crowd expresses anger and indignation, and
Okonkwo travels to Mbaino to deliver the message that they must hand over to Umuofia a
virgin and a young man. Should Mbaino refuse to do so, the two villages must go to war, and
Umuofia has a fierce reputation for its skill in war and magic. Okonkwo is chosen to
represent his clan because he is its fiercest warrior.

Earlier in the chapter, as he remembers his past victories, we learn about the five human
heads that he has taken in battle. On important occasions, he drinks palm-wine from the first
head that he captured. Not surprisingly, Mbaino agrees to Umuofia’s terms. The elders give
the virgin to Ogbuefi Udo as his wife but are not sure what to do with the fifteen-year-old
boy, Ikemefuna. The elders decide to turn him over to Okonkwo for safekeeping and
instruction. Okonkwo, in turn, instructs his first wife to care for Ikemefuna.

In addition to being a skilled warrior, Okonkwo is quite wealthy. He supports three wives and
eight children, and each wife has her own hut. Okonkwo also has a barn full of yams, a shrine
for his ancestors, and his own hut, called an obi.

Okonkwo fears weakness, a trait that he associates with his father and with women. When
Okonkwo was a child, another boy called Unoka agbala, which is used to refer to women as
well as to men who have not taken a title. Because he dreads weakness, Okonkwo is
extremely demanding of his family. He finds his twelve-year-old son, Nwoye, to be lazy, so
he beats and nags the boy constantly.

Summary: Chapter 3

Okonkwo built his fortune alone as a sharecropper because Unoka was never able to have a
successful harvest. When he visited the Oracle, Unoka was told that he failed because of his
laziness. Ill-fated, Unoka died of a shameful illness, “swelling which was an abomination to
the earth goddess.” Those suffering from swelling stomachs and limbs are left in the Evil
Forest to die so that they do not offend the earth by being buried. Unoka never held any of the
community’s four prestigious titles (because they must be paid for), and he left numerous
debts unpaid.
As a result, Okonkwo cannot count on Unoka’s help in building his own wealth and in
constructing his obi. What’s more, he has to work hard to make up for his father’s negative
strikes against him. Okonkwo succeeds in exceeding all the other clansmen as a warrior, a
farmer, and a family provider. He begins by asking a wealthy clansman, Nwakibie, to give
him 400 seed yams to start a farm. Because Nwakibie admired Okonkwo’s hard-working
nature, he gave him eight hundred. One of Unoka’s friends gave him another four hundred,
but because of horrible droughts and relentless downpours, Okonkwo could keep only one
third of the harvest.
Some farmers who were lazier than Okonkwo put off planting their yams and thus avoided
the grave losses suffered by Okonkwo and the other industrious farmers. That year’s
devastating harvest left a profound mark on Okonkwo, and for the rest of his life he considers
his survival during that difficult period proof of his fortitude and inner mettle. Although his
father tried to offer some words of comfort, Okonkwo felt only disgust for someone who
would turn to words at a time when either action or silence was called for.

Analysis: Chapters 1–3

We are introduced immediately to the complex laws and customs of Okonkwo’s clan and its
commitment to harmonious relations. For example, the practice of sharing palm-wine and
kola nuts is repeated throughout the book to emphasize the peacefulness of the Igbo. When
Unoka’s resentful neighbor visits him to collect a debt, the neighbor does not immediately
address the debt. Instead, he and Unoka share a kola nut and pray to their ancestral spirits;
afterward, they converse about community affairs at great length.

The customs regulating social relations emphasize their common interests and culture,
diffusing possible tension. The neighbor further eases the situation by introducing the subject
of debt through a series of Igbo proverbs, thus making use of a shared oral tradition, as
Okonkwo does when he asks Nwakibie for some seed yams. Through his emphasis on the
harmony and complexity of the Igbo, Achebe contradicts the stereotypical, European
representations of Africans as savages.
Another important way in which Achebe challenges such stereotypical representations is
through his use of language. As Achebe writes in his essay on Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart
of Darkness, colonialist Europe tended to perceive Africa as a foil or negation of Western
culture and values, imagining Africa to be a primordial land of silence. But the people of
Umuofia speak a complex language full of proverbs and literary and rhetorical devices.
Achebe’s translation of the Igbo language into English retains the cadences, rhythms, and
speech patterns of the language without making them sound, as Conrad did, “primitive.”

Okonkwo is the protagonist of Things Fall Apart, and, in addition to situating him within his
society, the first few chapters of the novel offer us an understanding of his nature. He is
driven by his hatred of his father, Unoka, and his fear of becoming like him. To avoid picking
up Unoka’s traits, Okonkwo acts violently without thinking, often provoking avoidable fights.
He has a bad temper and rules his household with fear. Okonkwo associates Unoka with
weakness, and with weakness he associates femininity. Because his behavior is so markedly
different from his father’s, he believes that it constitutes masculinity.

However, it strains his relationship with Nwoye and leads him to sin in Chapter 4 by breaking
the Week of Peace. His rash behavior also causes tension within the community because he
expresses disdain for less successful men. Ikemefuna later demonstrates that masculinity need
not preclude kindness, gentleness, and affection, and Nwoye responds far more positively to
Ikemefuna’s nurturing influence than to Okonkwo’s heavy-handedness.

Despite its focus on kinship, the Igbo social structure offers a greater chance for mobility than
that of the colonizers who eventually arrive in Umuofia. Though ancestors are revered, a
man’s worth is determined by his own actions. In contrast to much of continental European
society during the nineteenth century, which was marked by wealth-based class divisions,
Igbo culture values individual displays of prowess, as evidenced by their wrestling
competitions. Okonkwo is thus able, by means of his own efforts, to attain a position of
wealth and prestige, even though his father died, penniless and titleless, of a shameful illness.