Things Fall Apart

Chapter 5 begins at the Feast of the New Yam, “an occasion for joy throughout Umuofia” (37) and a thanksgiving holiday devoted “to Ani, the earth goddess and the source of all fertility” (36). For the festival, Okonkwo’s wives clean and decorate their huts and bodies. In the excitement, Okonkwo grows nervous, for he prefers work to celebration; he takes out his frustration by firing a gun at one of his wives, Ekwefi.

“In spite of this incident,” Okonkwo’s family celebrates “with great joy” (39). The women and their daughters cook copious amounts of food for the festival. On the second day, Ekwefi and her only daughter, Ezinma, work together, and Ezinma is in awe that her mother can “lift a pot from the fire with her bare hands” (40). Ezinma shares some coals with Nwoye’s mother, who is next door, where she sees a goat eat “two mouthfuls” of the yams set aside for eating (42).

As the women cook, “the distant beating of drums [begins] to reach them,” playing “the unmistakable wrestling dance—quick, light and gay” that makes Okonkwo move “to the beat” (42). It makes him want “to conquer and subdue” (42).

The drums pound, “persistent and unchanging,” as Ikemefuna, Nwoye, and Nwoye’s younger brothers carry pots of food to Okonkwo (44). Ezinma also takes some of Ekwefi’s pottage to her father. Obiageli, Nwoye’s sister, who has broken her water pot while playing around, recovers from a fit of fake tears to also bring her father some food. The two young women sit before Okonkwo while he eats, and he orders them to “sit like a woman” (44). Ezinma tells Okonkwo of Obiageli’s accident, but Obiageli, who has already told her father what happened, defends herself with a proverb: “People should not talk when they are eating or pepper may go down the wrong way” (45). Okonkwo defends Obiageli, and the chapter ends with the sound of the drums that “[continue] to beat” (45).

The whole village gathers for the wrestling match under a tree, where “spirits of good children […] waiting to be born” live (46). “Elders and grandees” sit on stools, and most others stand (46). Three men, “possessed by the spirit of the drums,” beat seven drums “feverishly” (46). The crowd forms a circle. Two wrestling teams finally dance into this circle to the roar of the crowd and the beat of the drums.

First, the teenagers wrestle. One, “Maduka, the son of Obierika,” defeats his opponent “as quick as a flash,” astonishing the crowd (47). While the crowd recovers from the shocking victory, the exhausted wrestlers and drummers “[become] ordinary human beings again,” resting to prepare for “the real matches” (48).

Amid the excitement, Ekwefi speaks with Chielo, the priestess of the Oracle Agbala. Chielo asks after Ezinma, Ekwefi’s daughter, whom she calls “my daughter” (49). “In ordinary life,” Chielo is a mother of two and a widow; those who see her in the usual context “would hardly believe she was the same person who prophesied when the spirit of Agbala was upon her” (49).

The judges decide the first five matches “[are] equally matched,” and they end without a victor (49). The final, between Okafo and Ikezue, enraptures the audience, who “[surround] and [swallow] up the drummers, whose frantic rhythm [is] no longer a mere disembodied sound but the very heartbeat of the people” (50). Okafo, in a swift maneuver, wins the match just before the judges call it, and his supporters sing and clap for him.