Two Tragedies, and a Master Piece – Chinua Achebe's Trilogy

Two tragedies, and a Master Piece – Chinua Achebe's Trilogy

The trilogy begins with the landmark literary accomplishment, Things Fall Apart, that depicts the first encounters between the Igbo people and the Christian Missionaries; it then moves on to the story No Longer at Ease, set in a Nigeria that is on the brink of Independence; the last story, Arrow of God, a true masterpiece, relates the gradual dissolution of Ezeulu, a powerful high priest. I call Arrow of God a true masterpiece because Achebe seems to have perfected the tragedy form in this story. There is a very interesting conversation in No Longer at Ease between its protagonist Obi Okonkwo and the Chairman of the Public Service Commission, who is interviewing him: the Chairman is surprised when Obi tells him that The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene was nearly ruined by the happy ending, (at the end of that novel its protagonist dies by suicide!), to which Obi replies: 'Perhaps happy ending is too strong, but there is no other way I can put it... Tragedy isn't like that at all. I remember an  old man in my village, a Christian convert, who suffered one calamity after  another. He said life was like a bowl of wormwood which one sips a little at a  time world without end. He understood the nature of tragedy.'

There seems to be a sort of progression in the intensity of Tragedy. Starting from Things Fall Apart, where we meet the famous Okonkwo, who, ashamed of his father Unoka, who was an an efulefu or 'a man of no title', a mere flautist who ran into debts, a pleasure-seeker, an idler... ashamed of this man, Okonkwo turns into something very rigid and in this sense seems to represent his society that, despite its several simple and poetic pleasantries (like the communal living, the give and take, the being close to Nature, the yummy yam pottages and soups! the concept of the "bride-price"...) was intransigently rigid in its ways: twin-babies were still buried in the Evil Forest where the outcasts lived, women and men of lesser resources were constantly shown their place... as a result of which there was much disaffection among its people, which disaffection the foreign Missionaries exploited, until in the end, things fall apart: Okonkwo, who has committed murder, does not see a way ahead and the weakness returns to him (his own son, Nwoye–disgusted perhaps by the human sacrifice of his friend and adopted brother, the "ill-fated" lad Ikemefuna, at the hands of his own father who loved him deeply and only killed him so as not to expose his affection of him–has joined the Missionaries)... Okonkwo does not see a way ahead and dies by suicide and is buried an outcast... Tragic, but not tragic enough going by his own grandson, Obi Okonkwo's logic... and so the tragedy progresses...

In No Longer at Ease we move on to something of a cosmopolitan Nigeria... we move on to Lagos, the city of Lights and night clubs and "pleasure cars"... Obi, our young England-educated protagonist falls in love with Clara, who happens to be an osu, or an outcast. Again, the question of society's rigidity comes in. Though Obi's parents have converted to Christianity they are unwilling to allow him to marry an osu and this leads to his devastation. It is with the tragedy of his humiliation that the novel opens. A tragedy more intense than that of his grandfather who died by suicide because the cliché 'The African is corrupt through and through,' (as reasoned out by his patronising boss Mr Green, who could never have understood the complexity of his case) will always hang on him, eating into his being ‘like a bowl of wormwood which one sips a little at a  time world without end’.                                                                                                                                                

"... Africa never spared those who did what they liked and not what they had to," this seems to be the driving dictum of the last tragedy in this series, Arrow of God. Or is it this, 'No man, however great, was greater than his people'? or is it both? or neither? or is it 'An animal more powerful than the ǹte (cricket) gets caught up in the ǹte's trap'? Or is it, 'that when two brothers fight a stranger reaps the harvest?' It is impossible to be too sure. Arrow of God is a masterpiece. And like all masterpieces it can only be experienced. Not understood. The novel begins with Ezeulu (the name is really a title which in Igbo means 'the king of Ulu, Ulu being a fictitious, all-powerful god) waiting for the new moon to show up so that he may drum his ogene by way of announcing its coming. Ezeulu is an old man, 'but the fear of the new moon which he felt as a little boy still hovered round him'.  The moon shows up (his younger wife Ugoye thinks it sits nakedly, like an evil moon) and Ezeulu beats his ogene and the children shout, 'Omwa atuo. Omwa atuo..' or 'Eight Months... Eight months...' This is so crucial to the plot. Because the entire action takes place across eight months. Because there are eight months to the Feast of the New Yam. Anyway, Ezeulu returns to his obi (compound) and takes out a yam and roasts it and eats it. There are eight yams left (out of an original thirteen). Each yam is to be eaten each month of the year, after the chief priest has announced the coming of the new moon. When, at the end of the year, all but one of the thirteen yams have been eaten, the chief priest, so instructed by his god, Ulu, announces that it is time for harvest. Until this no man of title or worth would harvest yam from his farm. This is the tradition. But this year things fall apart. The new British Administration in Nigeria is looking for Warrant Chiefs: the purpose behind this being the establishment of indirect rule among those tribes that lack Natural Rulers. Ezeulu is chosen to be a warrant chief, and when asked by the administration, he refuses. 'Tell the white man,' he says, to the interpreter, 'Ezeulu will not be anybody's chief, except Ulu.' He is put in a guardroom. For two months. No new moons are witnessed. No corybantic announcements are made. The rhythm is disturbed. In the end he returns a hero among his people (for refusing to be the white man's chief). It is the time of the Feast of the New Yam. But what of the three uneaten yams languishing in Ezeulu's obi? As I’ve said earlier, he can announce the Feast by drumming the large ikolo only when there is just one yam left.

Unlike Okonkwo, Ezeulu is not rigid and proud (he does answer the summons of the white man and leaves his hut and goes all the way to Okperi, he does enrol his son Oduche with the Missionaries so that he might learn the ways and even the "wisdom" of the white man: keep abreast with the times, as it were), he's probably proud in an old-fashioned, mild sort of a way. Unlike Obi Okonkwo he is not impetuous and sentimental at all. 'One half of him was man and the other half mmo [spirit] – the half that was painted over with white chalk at important religious moments. And half of the things he ever did were done by this spirit side.' Maybe this is what makes his tragedy so absolute. In the past his words have been disobeyed. His village went to war with the neighbouring village Okperi against his advice. And while in the guardroom, he dreamt of his being divested of his powers chiefly under the vituperations of one Nwako, a rich man, who worshipped the god Idemili. Does this make him more rigid than he would otherwise have been, and is this the reason why he refuses to announce harvest despite being pleaded by the elders of the village who agree to take the blame on their own heads? (but 'Africa never spared those who did what they liked and not what they had to...); or is he simply helpless because when he asks Ulu for guidance–regarding an appropriate sacrifice–all he hears is Church Bells and what should he make of this grotesque throw over by a God who has protected his village through thick and thin; anyway, in the end, it is the church that comes to the "rescue"; it announces that 'anyone who didn't want to wait to see all his harvest ruined could take his offering to the god of the Christians who claimed to have power of protection from the anger of Ulu. Such a story at other times might have been treated with laughter. But there was no more laughter left in the people.' And then another tragedy hits: Ezeulu's favourite son Obika dies. Why should these things happen to Ezeulu? At an earlier time, Ulu whispers into his ears that the events happening around him bear no relation to him – they are merely consequences of a war between Ulu and Idemili and ‘whoever throws the other down will strip him of his anklet,’; is it possible that – as the saying goes, 'when two brothers fight a stranger reaps the harvest?' –  a strange and foreign god has reaped the harvest? It is impossible to be too sure. In the end Ezeulu gets demented and people start harvesting their yams in the name of the strange and foreign son.

What I liked about these three stories: their structure. The plot lines hang loosely and limply until in the very end they fall symphonically together. And the wide range of Igbo proverbs. And, most importantly (I'm sorry if I sound facetious) the food. I now find myself craving for a good bowl of yam pottage with some bitter-leaf soup! And palm wine, Gourds and gourds of palm wine!