But he is beginning to find his.Lewis Nkosi once said that Chinua Achebe has paid a “ high price … for being Africa’s greatest indigenous novelist.” Achebe’s African Trilogy is certainly the “defining” literary account of the colonial encounter between British imperialism and traditional societies. Ezeulu, headstrong chief priest of the god Ulu, is worshipped by the six villages of Umuaro. A novelist from the Igbo nation in Nigeria, Chinua Achebe, borrowing from Adebayo, could be described as arguably Africa’sArrow of God (Paperback). KEYWORDS: Reference, Technique, Suspense, Achebe, Arrow of God INTRODUCTION Chinua Achebe is one of the foremost African literary writers whose works have attracted and are still attracting extensive scholarly discussions.
Like Okonkwo in Things Fall Apart, Ezeulu is an indigenous elite who will be a loser of the new colonial order. Though the novel is written from the many perspectives, the plurality of the narration focuses on Ezeulu who is the Chief Priest of the god Ulu of the six villages of Umuaro. Although when I started reading it I thought it was the second book in the trilogy since it chronologically occurs just after Things Fall Apart.
Though he is the voice of the god, the leaders of this village chose to reject Ezeulu. He is the spokesman of a local deity of 6 villages which came together for the sake of survival against its more formidable neighbours. This novel is centered around a chief priest, Ezeulu. It reminds me of Taleb’s distinction between fragility on the individual level versus an entire system.Yesterday evening I finished Chinua Achebe’s Novel Arrow of God. The consequences of British colonialism are clearly disastrous for Ezeulu but more nuanced for society as a whole.
There are ominous references made to some massacre at a nearby village. There is a general consensus among the Umuaro elite that the “white man” possesses weapons of immense power. The move also removes Oduche from being a possible successor to his father’s role which further underscores Ezeulu’s political deftness. The patriarch hedges his bets by sending one of his sons, Oduche, to receive a missionary education. Set in the Ibo heartland of eastern Nigeria, one of Africas best-known writers describes the conflict between old and new in its most poignant aspect: the personal struggle between father and son.Unlike Okonkwo, Ezeulu is more comfortable at navigating the tensions and contradictions with British rule and his role as a traditional chief.
The novel begins with a war between two neighboring regions of rural Igboland: Umuaro and Okperi. Arrow of God is set in rural Nigeria during the 1920s in a southern part of the country where the Igbo people reside. His final decline amounts to a sharp turn of events.Arrow of God Summary. Throughout most of the novel, Ezeulu seems to be causing rather than reacting to events. Being the chief priest of Ulu is no easy feat when your authority is contested by the priest of the minor god Idemili and the British District Officer Captain Winterbottom.
Ezeulu refuses the position. Winterbottom is eager to prevent a rerun of the extortion and corruption of the previous Warrant Chief, but has little option but to comply with this aspect of indirect rule. Wars break out as people fight for their beliefs and territory, however, there is only one winner.After Winterbottom is forced to make an appointment of Warrant Chief, he chooses Ezeulu to fill the role since he remembers his honest testimony in a previous case over a dispute with a rival village. Though, there are times when conflict arises that threaten prosperous success which ultimately leads to the downfall of one of two opponent subjects.
He was merely a watchman … What kind of power was it if it would never be used?The British react to this refusal with shock, and then anger, and Ezeulu is incarcerated for what amounts to showing cheek. It was true he named the day for the feast of the Pumpkin Leaves and the New Yam feast but he did not choose it. The same conundrum of most constitutional monarchies).Whenever Ezeulu considered the immensity of his power over the year and the crops and, therefore, over the people he wondered if it was real. Earlier the novel Ezeulu wondered what it meant to hold power as a priest if there was no variation in rituals (i.e.
He seems to appreciate the poor set of incentives and governance structures that emerged from each. Achebe does not romanticize traditional Igbo institutions or the colonial era. Thereafter any yam harvested in his fields was harvested in the name of the son.I have noted before that Achebe’s works are, at best, modestly anti-colonial. It is ironically the Christian missionary John Goodcountry who ends up coming out ahead rather than Ezeulu or the British authorities.In the extremity many a man sent his son with a yam or two to offer to the new religion and to bring back the promised immunity. This power play ultimately proves fatal after one of his sons dies in a ritual and the villagers switch their allegiance to the Christian god to prevent a famine. In what amounts to an ultimatum to Ulu, the Chief Priest refuses to initiate the yam harvest until his deity reveals himself through a sign.
Which, if it worked well at all, did so because the north was a feudal and hierarchical caliphate. The principle of indirect rule was initially established by Lugard for Northern Nigeria. However, the practice of creating of Warrant Chiefs (literally by the warrant of the District Commissioner) is revealed to be a farce for the Igbo people. Most readers of Things Fall Apart will remember the practice of twin murder.
Multiple narratives reveal the complexities of perspective and claims over truth in traditional Igbo society. As long as the Warrant Chiefs provided cheap labour and kept scandals out of report, illegal courts, private prisons, and mass extortion could be seen as the cost of doing business.The chief is the law, subject only to one higher authority, the white official stationed in his state as advisor.Arrow of God is a short but dense book. Much like the publicans of ancient Rome, it was difficult for the imperial power to get too worked up about these abuses. Little thought is given into the issue of accountability or incentives.
Rather, there are competing interests. Students of the public choice school of thought believe there is no “we” or “collective” when it comes to political decisions and outcomes. Within the British camp, there is antagonism over the implementation of indirect rule, class, and hierarchy. There is conflict between Ezeulu’s wives over his treatment of them and their children.
As he walked back to the court he thought about that book. In the book he planned to write he would stress that point. Such attention would give the natives a poor opinion of him. One of them was that a District Commissioner must never attend to such undignified details as cutting down a hanged man from the tree. The former District Commissioner described the motivation for writing his book as such: In the many years in which he had toiled to bring civilisation to different parts of Africa he had learnt a number of things. Achebe shows that the idea of a “unified” pre-modern society is, ironically, a fiction.There is an amusing reference in the book to Things Fall Apart when we are told that the British officer John Clark has just finished the book The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger and found it to be “pretty dull” and “much too smug”.
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