Things Fall Apart

Chapter 8 begins by describing Okonkwo’s grief after Ikemefuna’s death. For three days, he drinks only palm-wine; then, eventually, he calls upon Ekwefi to cook yams for him. Because the village is in a “season of rest,” Okonkwo has no work to do (64). He cannot distract himself and instead enters a negative cycle, calling himself a “woman” because “he has added a boy” to the number of people he has killed (65).

He visits his friend, Obierika, and greets Obierika’s son, Maduka, who wrestled so well days before. Okonkwo expresses concern over Nwoye who, he worries, “[does] not resemble [him]” (66). “A chick that will grow into a cock can be spotted the very day it hatches,” he tells Obierika, but Nwoye is not one such child; Obierika thinks, but does not say, that Nwoye has “too much of his grandfather” in him (66).

Okonkwo criticizes Obierika for not participating in Ikemefuna’s death, but he retorts by criticizing Okonkwo, whose actions, Obierika thinks, “will not please the Earth” (67). Amid their argument, Ofoedu arrives with news, which he releases only after some time eating and discussing the locusts. Ogbuefi Ndulue, a man from a nearby village, has died, and just after hearing of his death, his oldest wife also died. Obierika and Okonkwo are surprised, though Obierika concedes that “it was always said” that they “had one mind” and “he could not do anything without telling her” (68). This news changes Okonkwo’s belief that Ogbuefi “was a strong man in his youth” (68). Obierika and Okonkwo continue to argue over the roles valued by the village based on “the law of the land,” especially the law that proscribes tapping palms until they die (69).

Ibe, a suitor, comes to visit Obierika’s 16-year-old daughter, Akueke. Seven men—Obierika, Okonkwo, Ibe, and other family members—sit in the obi (or hut) while she prepares. They drink palm-wine and compliment Ibe, who tapped for the wine. Eventually, they arrive at the exchange of sticks that decides Akueke’s bride-price. After Maduka tells the women of the house, they “almost immediately” bring food and drink to the men to celebrate (73). The men discuss the customs of other tribes, for “what is good in one place is bad in another place” (74). Obierika mentions “white men who, they say, are white like [a] piece of chalk,” and though everyone seems intrigued, Machi says that Amadi, a person with leprosy who passes by often, is the white person of whom Obierika speaks (74).

Okonkwo is finally able to sleep peacefully again. Ekwefi wakes him one morning to tell him that “Ezinma is dying” (77). Immediately, Okonkwo knows that “it is iba,” or fever, and hurries to gather “the leaves and grasses and barks of trees that went into making the medicine for iba” (76). Both parents love Ezinma, finding it “impossible to refuse [her] anything” (76).

Ekwefi birthed 10 children, but only Ezinma survived past infancy. At every turn, Okonkwo called upon medicine men and oracles to advise her during pregnancy; both Okonkwo and Ekwefi followed these directions dutifully. But by the time Ezinma came, Ekwefi was “bitter,” caught up with “her own evil chi ” that “denied her” children (79).

When Ezinma came, she was “determined to live” (79). They enjoy a “companionship of equals,” in which Ezinma calls her mother by her first name (77). Still, Ezinma is often sick, and all believe that this is because she is an ogbanje, or an evil child cursed to die and return to her mother over and again. A year earlier, Ezinma led a medicine man to her iyi-uwa, or the believed link between her and “the world of ogbanje” (80). This new illness is Ezinma’s first since she was, all assume, disconnected from that danger.

Okonkwo returns with the materials for the medicine. Ekwefi tends the pot of medicine, and together they feed it to their crying child.