Arrow of God by Chinua Achebe (1964)

Arrow of God was Chinua Achebe’s third novel. It forms, along with 1) Things Fall Apart and 2) No Longer at Ease, the so-called ‘African Trilogy’. It shares similar settings and themes as its predecessors, being set among rural tribal people in the south-east of colonial-era Nigeria.

Book 1 of the trilogy, Things Fall Apart, is set in the 1890s and concerns Okonkwo, a big man in the local village, Umuofia. Book 2, No Longer At Ease, is about Okonkwo’s grandson, Obi Okonkwo, now living in Lagos but who frequently revisits his parents in his ancestral home, Umuofia, and is set 60 years later, in the 1950s.

Arrow of God is set chronologically between the two previous books, in the 1920s. It tells the story of Ezeulu, the chief priest of a set of six villages in Igboland, so not the Umuofia of books 1 and 2, though very similar in developmental level (very basic), diet, culture and religion. And Umuofia is mentioned several times as being a nearby village, so it’s still very much in the same region.

The phrase ‘Arrow of God’ comes from an Igbo proverb in which a person, or sometimes an event, is said to represent the will of God, an idea which is only fully explained right at the end of the narrative.

Arrow of God is twice as long as either of its predecessors, the chapters are longer, and Ezeulu has a larger extended family than Okwonkwo in the first novel. Just some of the reasons I found Arrow of God the hardest to read of the three books but, in the end, possibly the most rewarding.

Chapter 1

Ezeulu is the chief priest of Ulu, which seems to comprise the six villages of Umuaro (later listed as Umuachala, Umunneora, Umuagu, Umuezeani and Umuogwugwu). He is old. His eyesight is failing. He has an extended family:

• Ezeulu’s first wife, Okuata who died years ago, mother of:
  • Ezeulu’s eldest son Edogo, ‘quiet and brooding’, carving a tribal Mask, married to Amoge, has a small child
  • eldest daughter, Adeze, tall and bronze skinned (p.361)
  • daughter, Akueke, marries a man who beats her, so comes home for a year
    • Akueke’s daughter, Nkechi
• Ezeulu’s second and senior wife, ‘head wife’, Matefi (feels ignored by Ezeulu who favours his youngest wife, Ugoye):
  • Matefi’s son, and Ezeulu’s eldest son, Obika, tendency to anger, boastfulness and drunkenness
  • Matefi’s daughter Ojiugo
• Ezeulu’s third and youngest wife, Ugoye:
  • Oduche, the son sent to Church to learn the ways of the white man
  • Obiageli, a girl child
  • youngest son, still a boy, Nwafo
• Ezeulu’s younger brother, Okeye Onenyi

To recap, Ezeulu’s sons are, in order of age:

• Edogo
• Obika
• Oduche
• Nwafo

The narrative opens with Ezeulu fulfilling one of the duties of his role which is to scan the skies for the arrival of a new moon. When he sees it, Ezeulu ritualistically roasts one of the 12 holy yams set aside to  mark the 12 months of the year. When the twelfth and final yam is eaten, it triggers the Feast of the New Yam. Only then are the villagers allowed to set about harvesting the next crop of yams. This custom, which has the weight of religious belief behind it, will be the cause of the crisis which brings to book to its climax…

For the time being, it’s during this process of Ezeulu waiting for, then sighting, the new moon, that we meet most of the members of his extended family, arguing and bickering or going about their daily activities.

There are flashbacks to notable events. Most striking is the time his daughter, Akueke, came back to Ezeulu’s obi or compound, after being badly beaten, yet again, by her abusive husband, Ibe. This threw Ezeulu’s son, Obika, into a fury and he stormed off to the other village where the husband lived, beat him badly and returned carrying him tied to his bed. Ibe was left on this bed, under a tree for several days, before his kin arrived to reclaim him and complain about his treatment. They accepted that his beating Akueke was wrong but complained at him being abducted.

The point of this kind of anecdote is it shows how the tribal people had their own set of values and their own ways of sorting out disagreements or addressing unacceptable behaviour, according to custom and tradition.

Chapter 2

Chapter 2 describes how the six villages of Umuachala, Umunneora, Umuagu, Umuezeani, Umuogwugwu and Umuisiuzo came together for protection against slave raids from a place called Abame. They named themselves Umuaro and commissioned medicine men to create a god for them, who was named Ulu. When they banded together like this, the town of Okperi gave them land to build on as well as the deities Udo and Ogwugwu to worship.

But now, several years later, the leaders of Umuaro want to go to war with Okperi. The issue is some farmland which has lain fallow for years, whose ownership Umuaro and Okperi are contesting.

The chapter focuses on a big meeting of the tribal elders at which Ezeulu explains all this and counsels peace. But he is defeated by a big speech by Nwaka, who tells a different narrative about the founding of Umuaro and implies that its menfolk have become lazy cowards.

The meeting agrees to send Akukalia, who is aggressively for war, as an envoy to Okperi, to sound them out. Ezeulu counsels caution but isn’t listened to. Akukalia and his two companions go to the compound of one of his relatives, Uduezue, where he is rude and graceless, ignoring rituals of friendship and demanding to see the Okperi elders. Uduezue takes him to see Otikpo, they are joined by Ebo, all of them insisting that serious business cannot be conducted on a market day like today.

The conversation degenerates into shouting during which Ebo implies Akukalia is impotent so the latter attacks Ebo, beating him round the head. Ebo runs off to get a machete but Akukalia beats him to it, rushing into his hut, grabbing his ikenga or personal fetish and splitting it in two. Everyone is horrified at this sacrilege, Ebo loads his musket and, as Akukalia charges him, shoots him dead.

So war breaks out. First there is another big meeting of the elders. Ezeulu again takes a critical role, saying it was a mistake to send a hot-head like Akukalia and advising calm. But the war party, led by Nwaka, say that it is insulting that Okperi haven’t sent envoys to apologise for Akukalia’s death. Nwaka organises a separate meeting to which Ezeulu isn’t invited and makes a speech saying the High Priest isn’t a king, and can’t advise about policy, his only job is to conduct religious rituals. This meeting opts for war and there follow two days of fighting.

Maybe the most significant single aspect of all this is the scale of the so-called war. For on the first day Umuaro kills just two men from Okperi. On the following day Umuaro kills four men and Okperi kills three. Nine dead. Peanuts compared to the post-independence African wars I’ve been reading about, minuscule numbers.

Anyway the whole thing grinds to a halt when the local white man, who they call Winterbotta, intervenes with armed troops. Winterbotta confiscates the guns from both sides and publicly destroys them.

The thing about this entire event which I found hard to decipher from the text is that it is a flashback. The Ezeulu of the present, the man watching for the new moon, is remembering events which happened five years ago. The thing is he is still bitter/upset at having been ignored, and still upset that a large part of the elders of the six villages continue to think he was wrong, and continue to support Nwaka.

Chapter 3

The chapters about the natives, locals or Africans, alternate with chapters about the handful of British administrators working in the Okperi region. These are:

• Captain Winterbottom, District Commissioner, been in Nigeria 15 years
• Mr Clarke, Assistant District Officer, only been on station for 4 weeks
• Roberts, an Assistant Superintendent of Police in charge of the local detachment
• Wade, in charge of the prison aka the Assistant Superintendent
• Wright, doesn’t not really belong to the station, a Public Works Department man supervising the new road to Umuaro

Winterbottom considers himself an old hand. He fought against the Germans in the Cameroon campaign of 1916, where he gained the rank of captain. He has had to tell Wright off for sleeping with local women. He also suspects he’s using bad methods, including whipping, to get his road made.

It is bloody hot. Everyone is awaiting the arrival of the rains. He is awaiting the arrival of young Tony Clarke for dinner. Clarke’s only been out four weeks. For his part, Clarke is nervous and irritated at having to wear a formal dinner suit in the stifling heat.

As conversation, Winterbottom points out the collection of native guns he has and explains that he confiscated them from the natives to end a small conflict. This, of course, is the war we’ve seen described in chapter 2. there is a point here which is that Winterbottom’s explanation is significantly wrong, or glosses over the subtler details which Achebe’s account included. It’s the kind of simplifying which any administrator might apply to a situation, but the gap between the native understanding / explanation and the colonial one is significant and symbolic.

Anyway Winterbottom proudly tells Clarke it was this act that won him the local nickname of Otiji-Egbe, the Breaker of Guns. And a key feature of the whole little incident is that Winterbottom found that the only native who didn’t lie, who had integrity and told the truth, was a local high priest named Ezeulu.

Clarke is reading a book about Africa, ‘The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger’ by George Allen. This is notable because mention of this very book is made in the last sentence of Things Fall Apart. In that book the long complicated life story of the protagonist, Okonkwo, is reduced to a few sentences in the larger book being written by the administrator under whose rule Okonkwo is alienated and, eventually, kills himself. It is mightily symbolic that Clarke is reading the book. In its position at the end of Fall Apart it demonstrated how native traditions and entire life stories were almost completely ignored, misunderstood, reduced to a handful of sentences. Now the reference here shows how such misunderstandings and simplifications were handed down through the generations of colonialists, becoming accepted fact, becoming part of the discourse of power and administration.

We hear Winterbottom criticising London’s policy of indirect rule i.e. the policy of wherever possible creating local chiefs and leaders. Winterbottom thinks this is misconceived and is leading to all kinds of petty tyrants being artificially created.

Chapter 4

So five years pass after that ‘war’ and Nwaka gains increasing influence in Umuaro. He has an important backer, Ezidemili who is the priest of Idemili, the personal deity of one of the six villages, Umunneora. Ezidimili points out that Idemili has existed since the beginning of time whereas Ulu was created by the villagers.

When Winterbotta asked Ezeulu to nominate a member of his family to go to church to learn the ways of the white man he nominated his son Oduche, In fact it took 3 years for Ezeulu to enact this decision i.e. Oduche only started going to church two years ago.

On this particular morning the church bell is ringing and Oduche has dressed to attend Sunday service. Ezeulu regrets his decision. When his young son Nwafo interprets the church bells as saying: ‘Leave your yam, leave your cocoyam and come to church’ Ezeulu reflects that this is a ‘song of extermination’ i.e. calling the natives to neglect their work, their farming, their food and, by extension, neglect their traditional culture.

Then one of the family notices a box in Oduche’s hut is moving. To cut a long story short, the church had a new teacher, John Goodcountry, who told the congregation to aggressively overthrow the old customs. One of these was worship of the python who was considered a holy animal. So Oduche decides to kill one of the pythons that live in the roof of his mother’s hut. But when he’s manoeuvred it with a stick down to the ground he is scared of smashing its head in, in case he is cursed, and so manipulates it into a box which he locks, telling himself that it will die but he won’t be responsible for killing it.

It’s this moving box which has freaked the family out. When Ezeulu prizes it open with a spear everyone sees the imprisoned royal python (which quickly slithers to freedom) and word gets round the village that Oduche has committed a great blasphemy.

Ezidemili, the trouble-making priest of Idemili, sends a visitor to Ezeulu to ask what reparation he is going to make for the abomination his son has committed against his god. Ezeulu, incensed at being placed in this position, tells the visitor to return to Ezidemili and tell him to ‘eat shit’. I was surprised at the use of this swearword, as Achebe’s prose is usually so chaste and restrained. Must have had much more force in 1964.

Chapter 5

Back with Captain Winterbottom, his bitternesses and disgruntlements. The British policy is to create local leaders based on tribal values and culture so as to effect indirect rule. Cheaper and better. But Winterbottom thinks it is fake and is creating a generation of petty tyrants.

The great tragedy of British colonial administration was that the man on the spot who knew his African and knew what he was talking about found himself being constantly overruled by starry-eyed fellows at headquarters.

He remembers the case of James Ikedi, a native who he appointed officer for Okperi. After a while Winterbottom learned that this man was abusing his position to take bribes and kickbacks, plus selecting the best young women to take to bed. After 6 months he had to suspend him but then the Senior Resident came back from leave and reinstated him. And then Winterbottom learned that the man had set himself up as king, calling himself His Highness Ikedi the First, Obi of Okperi.

This was what British administration was doing among the Ibos, making a dozen mushroom kings grow where there was none before.

What prompts all this is an overbearing message from the Senior District Officer ticking Winterbottom off for delaying in selecting local chiefs. What makes it worse is that this man used to be Winterbottom’s subordinate but has been promoted over him.

Anyway, if he’s forced to appoint local leaders, he has in mind the chief priest Ezeulu.

Chapter 6

Back in the village Oduche is hiding from his father who is livid with him for trapping the royal python. He eventually returns, afraid, but Ezeulu doesn’t harm him.

Ezeulu’s in-law, Onwuzuligbo, comes to negotiate about the return of the beaten wife, Akueke, to his village. It is a friendly discussion. Ezeulu offers kolanut, Onwuzuligbo draws lines on the ground with white chalk and then colours the big toe of his right foot white. (Only near the end is it explained that these lines are the visitor’s ‘personal emblem’.) The negotiations are quite detailed, including recompense for the year that Ezeulu has been feeding her.

On the back of this Ezeulu sends the town crier around the village to announce the Festival of the Pumpkin Leaves.

Chapter 7

The Festival of the Pumpkin Leaves involves all the villages so on this one day the men of Umuachala and Umunneora meet as friends. We are shown the preparations of Ezeulu’s wives, Matefi, Ugoye, and daughter Akueke. The marketplace is packed. Grand arrival of Nwaka’s five wives, each wearing showy ivory leg decorations and fine velvet.

Then the central ceremony of the Festival which involves the big drum Ikolo and Ezeulu performing various acts, including recounting the story of the arrival of the god Ulu, and then asking the god for purification. There is a lot of running about, plus the women of each of the villages taking it in turn to perform ritual dances, trampling the pumpkin leaves which have been scattered on the floor.

This whole chapter has focused on Ezeulu’s womenfolk, gossiping about each other and in-laws. It ends with Akueke explaining that she is soon to return to her husband who beat her but now the entire village promises will do so no longer.

Chapter 8

Cuts back to the Brits and specifically Mr Wright who is in charge of getting a road built (with local labour) from Okperi to Umuaro, home of the novel’s protagonist Ezeulu. Wright hasn’t enough money to pay the labourers and toys with cutting their wages in order to recruit more. (In details like this Achebe captures the lofty indifference to the natives’ lives of their white masters.)

In the event Wright gets Winterbottom’s permission to recruit unpaid labour from Umuaro. The elders of Umuaro offer Wright two groups who have recently come of age (the natives seem to organise themselves into generations by year group, as at western schools). There’s some jokes about the cordial rivalry between the two groups and the nicknames they give each other, relating to the smallness of their penises.

Moses Unachukwu had been the first Christian convert in the region. Being a carpenter, he helped build the church. All this means he is the only native who speaks English (after a fashion) and so he acts as interpreter between Wright and these new recruits, which increases his kudos throughout the villages.

The story of Ezeulu’s son Obika and his friend Ofoedu being late turning up for the road work assignment because they are hungover from a drinking party the night before (a party which included much knowledgeable discussion of the sources and potency of palm wine). Despite being late Obika swaggers up to the labouring party and provokes Wright to lose his temper and lash out with his whip. Obika charges him but Moses wisely holds him back, then Wright’s assistants hold Obika while Wright gives him six lashes of the whip on his bare shoulders (p.369).

This leads the men to down tools and have a big discussion about whether to carry on working, which stirs up the whole issue of why they’re working for the white man, what right he has to tell them what to do, and so on, quite heated discussions in which Moses, Obika and his trouble-making friend Ofoedu take a leading part. Moses preaches submission because the material and religious power of the white man are unstoppable:

‘I have travelled in Olu and I have travelled in Igbo, and I can tell you that there is no escape from the white man. He has come. When Suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat left for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool. The white man is like that. Before any of you here was old enough to tie a cloth between the legs I saw with my own eyes what the white man did to Abame. Then I knew there was no escape. As daylight chases away darkness so will the white man drive away all our customs. I know that as I say it now it passes by your ears, but it will happen. The white man has power which comes from the true God and it bums like fire. This is the God about Whom we preach every eighth day…” (p.371)

(I should explain that this place named Abame was the centre of the local slave trade and when its inhabitants murdered a white man sent to talk to them, the whites returned in force, with African soldiers, and killed every man, woman and child in the place. News of this massacre spread round the region and is routinely invoked whenever anyone suggests any kind of rebellion against white rule.)

Ezeulu hears that his son has been whipped and considers reporting Wright to Winterbottom, but when Obika and Ofoedu arrive back at the compound and admit to being late and drunk and insubordinate, Ezeulu decides not to. He hates Ofoedu, who he considers a ‘worthless young man who trails after his son like a vulture after a corpse’ (p.376).

(Incidentally, we see Ezeulu’s opinion of Wright who, unlike tall and commanding Winterbottom, Ezeulu finds short and thick and hairy as a monkey.)

Chapter 9

The homestead of Edogo and his wife Amoge. Their first child died in a few months and now the second infant is sick, too. He ponders Ezeulu’s partiality for some of his sons over others and wonders who will succeed him as chief priest.

Ezeulu’s old friend and one of the few people he listens to, Ogbuefi Akuebue, comes to visit. This is because Ezeulu is still recovering from his energetic exertions at the Festival. Akuebue carries out the drawing of the four white chalk lines, colouring of the big toe of the right foot.

Nothing very significant comes of this visit. Ezeulu’s sons attend, the youngest, Nwafo, fetching first a kola nut, then some water, Edogo entering, greeting the guest and offering palm wine which has just been sent him by the client who’s commissioned him to carve a wooden door. Akuebue repeats a profound tirbal saying about booze:

‘The only medicine against palm wine is the power to say no.’

As a teetotaller that struck a chord. I think the point of these slow domestic scenes is precisely that, to immerse the reader in the etiquette and manners of these people, every bit as detailed and precise as the ladylike manners of Jane Austen’s characters.

They discuss a bit the fate of Obika being whipped, and discuss whether anyone can know the truth who was not there. A conversation about epistemology and morality.

Chapter 10

Tony Clarke is hosting his boss, Winterbottom, to dinner. Clarke has been in Nigeria for 6 weeks. He’s just back from a tour of the region (also known as the division or district) during which he stayed a night in the official rest house where Wright is staying as he supervises construction of the road, and discovered he likes Wright very much. They have a massive gossip about Winterbottom, uttering the word ‘captain’ with sarcasm. Wright tells Clarke that part of Winterbottom’s problem is that during the Cameroon war of 1916, his wife left him for another man. They go on to agree that ‘Old Tom’ as he’s known is a figure of fun back at headquarters in Enugu.

During the gossip we learn that Winterbottom came out to Africa in 1910 and has been there 16 years. So it must be 1926 (p.391).

All that is told in a flashback, a memory in Clarke’s mind. Achebe uses flashbacks a lot. They add depth to the narrative but also contribute to it being confusing, for example it took me ages to realise that all of chapter 2 with its account of the lead-up to the brief village war, was a flashback.

Back in the present Clarke hosts the dinner (consisting of small dry chicken cooked over a wood fire by his cook). As in almost all the British chapters, there’s a moment symbolising British ignorance and slackness. Winterbottom had specifically asked Clarke to enquire into rumours that Wright was whipping the native workers. Only when he returned does Clarke remember that, despite or because of a boozy evening with Wright, he completely forgot to ask. Anyhow, he didn’t really know how to make enquiries: who should he ask? who would translate for him? who could he trust?

The point is that Clarke therefore wrote in his official report that there was no whipping. Winterbottom is mildly puzzled because word has got to him of the whipping of Obika. On balance, he decides to trust Clarke and his report will enter the official record, but it’s another example of the British authorities not understanding or getting the full story.

Anyway, their little conversation returns to Winterbottom’s bugbear, namely the ill-advised policy of setting up local chiefs, and Winterbottom repeats the story of James Ikedi who, given a little authority, turned himself into a corrupt abuser and now king of his own people.

‘The man was a complete nonentity until we crowned him, and now he carries on as though he had been nothing else all his life. It’s the same with Court Clerks and even messengers. They all manage to turn themselves into little tyrants over their own people. It seems to be a trait in the character of the negro.’

This little speech was probably intended to be hair-raisingly patronising and insulting in the fresh optimistic days of 1964 as African nations were gaining their independence. Now, 60 years later, after tyrants and dictators such as Mobutu and Amin, after Bokassa, Sani Abacha, Mugabe, Macias Nguema, Sekou Toure, Siad Barre, Mengistu, Omar al-Bashir and Hissene Habre, Paul Kagame, Isaias Afwerki, after countless civil wars (Angola, Mozambique, Sudan, Eritrea, Somalia), coups and massacres, it sounds more like a prophecy than a slur.

Chapter 11

Ezeulu visits his friend Ogbuefi Akuebue. Akeubue tells his son, Obielue, to go to his mother and ask for a kola nut, the standard food broken at visits. Akeubue has a back problem which means he can’t straighten up after sitting a long time. In this and a thousand other domestic touches, Achebe humanises his characters, normalises them, seeks to erase the barrier of incomprehension which we see the colonial rulers erecting in the narratives themselves.

During the conversation they hear gunshots which, interestingly, neither man attributes to violence i.e. fighting let alone shooting in anger, are things of vanishing rarity. Instead Ezeulu immediately realises they are shots fired to ward off evil spirits. In other words, someone is seriously ill. It is Ogbuefi Amalu and Ezeulu goes to visit him allowing the text to give us a very detailed description of the traditional medicines, fetishes and objects festooning his room to effect a cure.

A few days later Ezeulu is back at his obi when Obika’s bride arrives, accompanied by all her womenfolk, 20 in total, while Ezeulu’s compound is packed with family and relatives. In other words, a grand occasion. She is named Okuata, is tall and strikingly good looking. Again this is an opportunity to display detailed knowledge not only of the etiquette of such an occasion but what everyone is wearing, especially the bride, her hairstyle, the strings of jigida covering her privates. The full ceremony, including the sacrifice performed by a medicine man, and the anxious thoughts of bride and groom, are thoroughly described.

Unusually, the medicine man, Aniegboka, does not bury the hen the family brought along with the other symbols of the past which must be buried in the roadway back to Okuata’s village, as is the custom, but instead says he will take it home and eat it himself. This worries Obika, who, when the procession returns to his obi, asks his father if this is usual. Ezeulu says no but it is no worry because he performed his part; what the diviner does with the holy objects is not his concern.

But Achebe observes that Ezeulu is mightily pleased that his son was a) concerned about the proprieties and b) asked his father about it i.e. showed reverence and filial duty. Maybe he is growing up now he is married.

Chapter 12

Next morning the newly married and deflowered Okuata is pleased to wear the loincloth of a married woman and immensely relieved that her virginity has been confirmed. Obika sends a goat to her parents in thanks for her ‘virtue’ being intact. It’s probably obvious, but isn’t the entire way women were treated in this society a textbook definition of ‘patriarchy’.

Edogo goes to visit Ezeulu’s friend Akuebue because he is worried about (what he thinks are) his father’s plans for succession to the priesthood i.e. his positioning of Nwafo to inherit it.

Meanwhile, almost the entire extended household went to the stream to fetch water and an argument breaks out. The new bride Okuata pays just a bit too much attention to Oduche the Christian, whereupon his sister Ojiugo rather loudly tells Okuata that this is the infidel who killed the royal python, which infuriates Obika who confronts Ojiugo, who slaps him, who beats her back, and the entire family has to separate them. They and onlookers take sides and there are further micro-disputes.

Obviously, when Ojiuga gets home, crying, with slap marks on her face, her mother Matefi sets up a loud howling prompting Ezeulu to stride into her hut and tell her to ‘shut your mouth’ (p.415). In my Conclusion I suggest the book has many more characters, with their own storylines, than the previous two novels and this makes it rather like a soap opera.

His friend Akuebue visits Ezeulu, ostensibly to talk about Oduche but the conversation spills out into a rehash of the clan’s accusations that five years ago, in the little village war, Ezeulu betrayed his clan to the white men. This triggers a lengthy justification from Ezeulu, saying the coming of the white man and the overpowering of their people is nothing to do with him. It was nothing to do with him when the white man massacred Abame. And now, it is absurd of people like his enemy Nakwa to blame him, Ezeulu, for the rise of the white man. Do they think that if they overthrow or kill Ezeulu, the white man will go away? Of course not. Leading up to Ezeulu’s comment on himself:

‘I can see things where other men are blind. That is why I am Known and at the same time I am Unknowable. You are my friend and you know whether I am a thief or a murderer or an honest man. But you cannot know the Thing which beats the drum to which Ezeulu dances. I can see tomorrow; that is why I can tell Umuaro: come out from this because there is death there or do this because there is profit in it. If they listen to me, o-o; if they refuse to listen, o-o. I have passed the stage of dancing to receive presents.’ (p.419)

Akuebue realises that Ezeulu sent his son Oduche to the church not as a sellout of the clan but as a sacrifice to staunch the white man’s power.

To everyone’s astonishment a black messenger from Winterbottom arrives, dressed in a fancy uniform. After a fuss of etiquette, he announces that Winterbottom has summoned him to go to Okperi. He then throws in some corruption, saying that Winterbottom is busy to Ezeulu might have to wait several days but if he gives the messenger a big meal, he’ll make sure he’s seen the next day. Ezeulu is calm and dignified and says he goes nowhere to attend anyone; Winterbottom must come to him. The messenger is outraged. Ezeulu offers that his son Edogo will go in his stead. The messenger refuses to take the message.

Chapter 13

Ezeulu calls a big meeting of the six villages. As usual the formalities and etiquette are described in some detail. First Ezeulu describes to them the arrival of the white man’s messenger. Then there is a general debate in which his enemy, Nwaku, is predictably critical. And then Ezeulu concludes proceedings by saying he will travel to Okperi to see Winterbottom.

Description of the estrangement between Ezeulu who became a priest and his half-brother, Okeke Onenyi who inherited their father’s skills as a medicine man. Family soap opera. Okeke is fond of his nephew, Edogo, which is part of the reason Ezeulu dislikes them both.

Cut to a complete change of scene. Winterbottom is coming down with his annual bout of fever. He brags about being an ‘old coaster’ to Clarke who is shrewd enough to realise that, as the new boy, he needs to act impressed. He is just tipping over when he receives the message that Ezeulu refused to accede to his summons. In a fury Winterbottom orders that officers be sent to arrest Ezeulu, bring him to Okperi, and throw him in prison until Winterbottom has returned from the visit he’s planning to make to headquarters in Enugu. But then he falls into a delirium and is taken to hospital.

In the hospital he is treated by the missionary doctor Mary Savage who inadvertently reveals the fact to the local staff that she adores the sick man.

Meanwhile, two officers are dispatched to arrest and bring back Ezeulu, in handcuffs if necessary. After much prevarication by the villages, they find Ezeulu’s compound and, after terrifying the family, finally establish that Ezeulu has already departed and is heading for Okperi. Now the two messengers are afraid of looking like fools, and so decide they will take two members of the family back with them as security, to be released as and when Ezeulu appears. Old Akuebue talks them out of this with a counter-offer of gifts, so they are presented with a feast of yam and chicken and palm wine, given two live cocks and two shillings. Here as in all other dealings with the so-called Court Messengers, as in the career of James Ikedi, you can see how the presence of the white man encouraged black-on-black corruption and extortion which hadn’t been there before, which tribal customs and processes had prevented. The white man brings the threat of arbitrary and extreme violence which his middle men can use to extort gifts from terrified villagers.

Meanwhile all the natives on Government Hill connect the fact that Winterbottom fell seriously ill just after ordering the arrest of the Chief Priest of Ulu as proof of Ezeulu’s power, proud of the might of their customs despite the white man’s bullying.

Clarke returns from the hospital anxious for Winterbottom’s life so when his steward tells him that Ezeulu has arrived, he irritably orders him to be locked up. All the black staff on Government Hill are now terrified of Ezeulu’s power. So the officers of the guardhouse sweep it out and pretend it is a guest room for Ezeulu and Obika. Their wives bring lots of food which Ezeulu refuses.

Then two messengers who went to Umuora are revealed as frauds because Ezeulu got there under his own steam without them. What’s more, they begin to suspect they might be liable to Ezeulu’s magic and so consult an old dibia (medicine man) who tells them to bury the two cocks and the money Ezeulu’s family gave them.

Thus great fear of Ezeulu’s power spreads through the entire black staff on Government Hill, their families and villages.

Chapter 14

Later that night Ezeulu has a dream-vision of his grandfather confronting the obstinate men of Umuora, of the villagers of Umuora as his enemy.

Clarke decides to follow through on Winterbottom’s feverish determination to teach Ezeulu some manners and so leaves him in prison for four days. En route to the hospital he and Wade come across a more than usually lavish sacrifice (the same cocks and money the two messengers dedicated) and stop to examine it. When Wade sees the money, he pockets it. Clarke is alarmed at this desecration of a native offering.

Initially hostile to the clansman who had brought the messenger to his compound and is now looking after him in ‘prison’, John Nwodika, the latter’s insistence on being a good host and getting his wife to prepare fulsome meals brings him round.

Obika returns to Umuora. As you can imagine every member of the family is alarmed and upset. We have gotten to know them so well that we register the different responses of each one. When Akuebue hears the Ezeulu is being fed by the wife of Nwodika, he instantly declares he is setting off to see Ezeulu. He doesn’t trust the people of Okperi one inch.

So later that day his son, wife (Ugoye) and friend (Akuebue) arrive at the prison. They find Ezeulu extremely relaxed about his extended stay. He jokes that if the white man dies and requires him to be sacrificed that will be fine, though his family immediately let out storms of protest.

Winterbottom’s steward, John Nwodika, the man who’s been looking after Ezeulu now tells them all the story of how he came into the white man’s service and then his excitement at promoting his clan (Umuora).

Ezeulu has come to trust Nwodika. Edogo is grateful to him for looking after his father. So they perform the ceremony to become blood brothers, namely breaking a kola nut, cutting their thumbs and smearing some blood on a nut, then eating the nut smeared with the other’s blood.

Eventually, after being kept waiting four days, Ezeulu is summoned to the presence of Clarke who treats him disrespectfully before finally getting round to telling Ezeulu that the British want to make him the warrant chief of Umuaro. There’s a silence then Ezeulu says he will nobody’s chief except Ulu’s. Infuriated, Clarke has him sent back to the cells.

Chapter 15

Word gets around that Ezeulu has refused to be the white man’s puppet. Clarke goes to see Winterbottom who’s been in hospital for two weeks and looks very ill and weak. Apprised of the situation, Winterbottom tells Clarke to keep the priest locked up till he caves in and co-operates with the administration. Clarke is relieved not to have to make the decision but troubled by the lack of legal justification for locking up an old man who’s done nothing wrong.

After 32 days during which his reputation has spread far and wide, Ezeulu is told he is free to leave. All through this period he has not cared about the white man’s decisions at all – it is the battle with his own people he is determined to win. He wants to lay to rest forever the accusation made by Nakwa and his ilk that Ezeulu collaborated with the white man and even brought the white man to Umuora. Now nobody can say he is a collaborator.

Clarke took the decision to release Ezeulu partly on his own, partly influenced by a letter from a report by the Secretary for Native Affairs recommending that the policy of appointing new chiefs be suspended.

Chapter 16

So Ezeulu sets out for Umuaro, accompanied by the faithful John Nwodika who wouldn’t hear of him making the long journey alone. En route the rains start, really heavy continuous freezing cold rain, so that Ezeulu arrives home drenched, much to the concern of his kin.

They warm him, rub him with oils, and he has over 50 visitors, not counting women. For most of the time he leans against the wall not saying anything, letting his friend Akuebue answer all their questions. When he was at Okperi the entire village seemed to be The Enemy, but once he’s back he hears all kinds of conflicting opinions (especially on the key issue of whether to confront the white man or not) and realises it’s not so simple.

Suddenly Ezeulu has a religious revelation, a key moment which changes his entire attitude to himself and the problem of his enmity with his own people. The god Ulu speaks in his ear and berates him for thinking that this is his fight. What if he is only part of a wider plan? Ulu explains that he has his own fight with another deity, Idemili.

Since it’s at the core of the narrative and its interpretation it’s worth quoting at length:

‘Ta! Nwanu!’ barked Ulu in his ear, as a spirit would in the ear of an impertinent human child. ‘Who told you that this was your own fight?’

Ezeulu trembled and said nothing.

‘I say who told you that this was your own fight which you could arrange to suit you? You want to save your friends who brought you palm wine he-hehe-he-he!’ laughed the deity the way spirits do – a dry, skeletal laugh. ‘Beware you do not come between me and my victim or you may receive blows not meant for you! Do you not know what happens when two elephants fight? Go home and sleep and leave me to settle my quarrel with Idemili, who wants to destroy me so that his python may come to power. Now you tell me how it concerns you. I say go home and sleep. As for me and Idemili we shall fight to the finish; and whoever throws the other down will strip him of his anklet!’

After that there was no more to be said. Who was Ezeulu to tell his deity how to fight the jealous cult of the sacred python? It was a fight of the gods. He was no more than an arrow in the bow of his god. This thought intoxicated Ezeulu like palm wine. New thoughts tumbled over themselves and past events took on new, exciting significance. Why had Oduche imprisoned a python in his box? It had been blamed on the white man’s religion; but was that the true cause? What if the boy was also an arrow in the hand of Ulu? (p.476)

He should stop worrying and agonising about scruples and details. His god has a plan. He is just a part of it.

Chapter 17

You might have expected the white people to make an appearance, maybe Clarke to send more soldiers, and relations with them become more fraught, as they do at the end of Things Fall Apart – the whole situation building up to some grisly climax… But no. Back in Umuora life returns to normal.

Life went on as though nothing had happened or was ever going to happen.

Achebe summarises the way each of the family members carries on being themselves (having gotten his new wife pregnant, Obika returns to his normal behaviour of drinking too much palm wine). The six villages celebrate their various festivals. The rains stop, allowing the yam tubers to ripen.

The chapter then turns into a very detailed, evocative, immersive description of the inauguration of the new Mask Edogo has spent a lot of the narrative carving. A huge crowd assembles to watch the procession accompanied by flute and led by Obika, by far the most handsome manly man in the village, then the ritual slaughter of the two rams. It is a masterful description.

Chapter 18 – the crisis

It approaches the Feast of the New Yam which marks the new year. Emissaries from the six villages visit Ezeulu to tell him they are worried that 12 moons have passed and he has not set the date for the feast. Ezeulu reprimands them for infringing on his powers but when they leave he is youthful and gay. He is going to get his own back on the village which ignored his advice all those years ago.

Word gets round that Ezeulu is refusing to name the day of the feast and so ten wise men come to see him. Argument. They say that delaying setting the feast time will delay harvesting, their yams will rot in the ground and they will all starve. Ezeulu for his part says he still has three holy yams left to eat before he can declare the date. The point is that he only eats these yams at the arrival of each new moon. So his ruling implies everyone will have to wait two more months before harvesting their yams. Well, can’t he eat them all on one day, the elders ask? Don’t be ridiculous, that would be blasphemy. Well, can’t the elders take the blasphemy and penance on themselves? Various attempts to solve the issue, until they leave.

It turns into a real issue. Ezeulu’s delay means the people of the six village of Umuaro will have to wait two more moons before harvesting their yams, their main crop. Meanwhile the rains come to an end, the earth hardens and the harvesting becomes daily more difficult.

Ezeulu becomes public enemy number one. His family are sneered at. His grandchildren are called names. Women refuse to sell his wives goods in the market. Elders of the villages discuss the rights and wrongs of his behaviour. Ogbuefi Ofoka shrewdly observes that Eleuzu has been spoiling for a fight with Umuora for some time, and now this has given him the opportunity.

Abruptly the focus of the narrative shifts completely to the local Christian church, run by the zealous John Jaja Goodcountry, Catechist of Still Mark’s C.M.S. Church, Umuaro. Achebe gives a complicated account of the fortunes of Goodcountry’s church, which takes in events in other districts, religious conflicts with the natives etc. The point is, Goodcountry hears about the growing controversy about the Feast of the New Yams and sees it as an opportunity for recruitment.

He has it put around that anyone who brings one yam to the Christian church will win the support of the Christian God who is far more powerful than Ulu, and who will permit them to then commence their harvesting (which has been dangerously delayed by Ezeulu’s obstinacy).

Chapter 19

Ezeulu’s obstinacy has resulted in famine. The neighbouring peoples to Umuaro are making a fortune selling them yams at market while Umuaro’s own yams rot in the ground unharvested. An eminent man dies but his family cannot hold a wake because there are no yams.

A deadly silence descends on the famine-stricken village. Nobody visits Ezeulu. A new moon comes and Ezeulue eats the twelfth yam, But there is still a whole 28 days till he eats the last one and the harvest can begin. People will be starving by then.

The climax is dense and spooky. the family of Ogbuefi Amalu who died in the rainy season approach fine handsome Obika to perform the role of ogbazulobodo on the night before the dead man’s second burial. The performance requires him to adopt the personality of the spirit and then race through all the pathways of the village repeating time-honoured proverbs. Although Ezeulu’s family is unpopular, Obika is still the best at running and chanting, and so he accepts the invitation.

As usual, a detailed and utterly convincing description of the preparation of the ritual, Obika’s dressing and then becoming the spirit and setting off running. But he returns to the preparers and mourners much sooner than expected and collapses at their feet and dies.

They bring Obika’s body to Ezeulu. He breaks. Why did the god do this to him? He followed his rules to the letter. Why has he been punished? Lost in the endless labyrinth of theology, Ezeulu cracks and goes mad, like his mother before him.

The very end of the narrative (like that of Things Fall Apart) returns to the whites. Winterbottom had been recuperating from his illness in England. Now he returns to his post, marries the doctor and never even hears a word of Ezeulu’s fate. The entire complex story with its numerous interlocking relationships, its entire world of values and motivations, simply doesn’t exist for the white rulers. But:

It looked as though the gods and the powers of event finding Winterbottom handy had used him and left him again in order as they found him.

So was he, also, part of Ulu’s plan? Was Winterbottom, also, an arrow of god?

What happened?

So what happened in the central storyline? There are six possible interpretations:

1. Was Ezeulu right to follow his interpretation of his religious duty, to hold out to the letter of the law dictating that he only eat one of the holy yams per month, and thus throwing the village he was meant to be protecting into crisis? Was there no compromise, no way he could have eaten the other two yams on the same day and blamed the elders, who would have done penance to appease Ulu? I.e. was he only doing his duty?

Or 2, was he being obstinate and taking advantage of the crisis in order to wilfully punish the village he had a grudge against? I.e. was the situation caused by his obstinacy?

Or 3, was it all the white man’s fault? By arresting him and keeping him in prison on Government Hill for just over a month, through two new moons (which he couldn’t celebrate by eating the holy yams set aside for each one) was it white man’s interference in the natural scheme of things which caused the crisis?

Or 4, as per Ezeulu’s vision of Ulu, was this all part of Ulu’s plan which Ezeulu didn’t agree with but which he had to follow. Was Ezeulu just a pawn in the god’s larger plans, an arrow of god, in which case the six villages themselves, and the famine they suffered, were all part of some larger plan which no mortal could understand?

Or 5, did the god punish Ezeulu for taking against the village the god exists to protect? In the villagers’ opinion:

Their god had taken sides with them against his headstrong and ambitious priest and thus upheld the wisdom of their ancestors – that no man however great was greater than his people; that no man ever won judgement against his clan. (p.512)

Lastly, 6, the novel ends with the thought that the only ones to benefit from the situation were the Christians. Many families ignored Ezeulu’s ruling and took advantage of John Goodcountry’s offer, taking a yam to sacrifice to the Christian god in the hope that this would supersede the blasphemy done to Ulu. In other words, the entire complex tangled sequence of events turns out to be just a footnote in the white man’s cultural and religious conquest of Igboland.

Traditional sayings

Part of the power and authority of Things Fall Apart derives from the wealth of folk stories and, especially, traditional sayings or proverbs which the characters utter as a regular part of their dialogue. There are so many, it gives an impression of a great plenitude, that there’s an indefinite storehouse of folk wisdom to draw on.

The thing is, some of these recur in No Longer At Ease. And the same ones occur again in Arrow of God. This rather undermines the initial impression of a huge storehouse, and begins to give the impression of the opposite, of a finite set of saying which are endlessly regurgitated by characters. In all three books occurs the saying about the little bird, nza, who ate and drank and got over-confident and challenged his personal god to single combat. There’s also the proverb about the outsiders who weep louder than family at the funeral. And then the story of the bird Eneke-nti-oba. When his friends asked him why he was always on the wing he replied: ‘Men of today have learnt to shoot without missing and so I have learnt to fly without perching.’

• ‘When an adult is in the house the she-goat is not left to suffer the pains of parturition on its tether.’ (cited three times in chapter 2, in chapters 13 and 18)
• ‘When the roof and walls of a house fall in, the ceiling is not left standing’ (quoted twice, in chapters 2 and 8)

For reference, I’ll publish a list of all these wisdom sayings in my next blog post.

Conclusion

There are many more characters in Arrow of God than Achebe’s previous books and they’re more densely crowded. It’s not only longer, it feels a lot more busy. And unlike the first two books it doesn’t focus so much on one central protagonist. Instead the extra length allows Achebe to describe in much more detail other characters such as Ezeulu’s wives and children, his sons and daughters. There are also many more sub-plots, for example, about the domestic abuse of his daughter Akueke, or Oduche attending the Christian church, or Obika being a swaggering braggart, or descriptions of the quiet son, Edogo, as he works on the Mask he is carving. It feels more like a soap opera, with multiple characters and storylines all going on at the same time, alternating and interweaving.

This made Arrow of God significantly harder to read than the first two books, which are shorter and more focused, with just the one central storyline concentrating on the protagonist. At quite a few places I got lost and had to reread paragraphs or pages to figure out who was doing what and what was going on.

So it’s a harder and more demanding read than the first two. But, on the plus side, being longer and more copious than its predecessors means the reader is more thoroughly immersed in the range and diversity of native life, immensely immersed, soaked.

Maybe this is why Achebe, many years later, wrote in a brief foreword that Arrow of God was his favourite among his novels. It feels the most encyclopedic, giving a really comprehensive overview of the tribal life and customs of the time. It stands alongside Things Fall Apart as a mighty achievement.

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Credit

Arrow of God by Chinua Achebe was published in by Heinemann Books in 1964. References are to the 2010 Everyman’s Library edition.

Related link

• Arrow of God online

Chinua Achebe reviews

• Things Fall Apart (1958)
• No Longer at Ease (1960)
• Arrow of God (1964)
• Arrow of God: Sayings of Wisdom
• A Man of the People (1966)
• The Trouble with Nigeria (1983)
• Anthills of the Savannah (1987)

Africa reviews

• Africa reviews

Posted by Simon on January 19, 2024

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2024/01/19/arrow-of-god-chinua-achebe/