53 pages • 1 hour read
Chinua AchebeArrow of God
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1964A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Arrow of God begins with its protagonist, the Chief Priest Ezeulu of Umuaro, who looks for “signs of the new moon” (1). Ezeulu notices that, as he grows older, it becomes more difficult to look at the moon for long periods of time. He recognizes that he is still “as good as any young man, or better because young men [are] no longer what they used to be” (2).
Ezeulu still fears the new moon. Even though becoming Chief Priest meant that his fear of the new moon “was often overpowered by the joy of his high office” (2), today he still fears his responsibility. He beats his ogene, a large metal bell, and the others in his compound join in a chant.
Ezeulu can hear his wives argue about where the moon is. The younger insists that it is “an evil moon” (2), but Matefi does not agree. He can also hear his children, Obiageli and Nwafo, her brother, argue over whether the moon kills people.
One sacred yam, which Ezeulu pulls from a special hut, is his food that night. He recalls the calendar and realizes that the festival of the Pumpkin Leaves will come soon; he remembers to send out messengers to announce the festival the next day. Ezeulu ponders his power over the crops, which he worries is “no more than the power of a child over a goat that was said to be his” (3).
Nwafo, who is his youngest son, enters his obi. Ezeulu senses that Ulu, “the deity [has] already marked him out as his future Chief Priest” (4). Still, Ezeulu is wary of the fact that “in his place Ulu might choose the least likely of his sons to succeed him” (4). His eldest son, Edogo, joins them both.
Ezeulu asks Edogo about the rumor he has heard that Edogo is “carving an alusi for a man of Umuagu” (4), meaning an image of a god. Edogo knows he is not to create images of gods. After he is chided, Edogo leaves. Then, his sister Obiageli enters.
The children watch while Ezeulu eats the sacred yam, from which he “never gave out even the smallest crumbs” (5). After eating, he takes an ofo staff and sits in front of the shrine in a womanly position. Then, he prays to Ulu, thanking the god for making him “see another new moon” (6). After the prayer, he feels bitter for the division that has fallen on the six villages “because he had spoken the truth before the white man” (6), referring to Wintabota.
The voices of women interrupt his thinking. When he and Nwafo hear another of Ezeulu’s sons, Obika’s voice, they remember Obika’s vision of the god Eru a few years earlier: Eru “gives wealth to those who find favour with him” (8).
Ojiugo, Ezeulu’s daughter by Ojiugo, brings food to the hut and orders Nwafo out. Ezeulu insists that Nwafo can stay, bothered by the women’s dislike for his other wife’s son, and asks for Ojiugo to call her mother. He complains that to Matefi that his meal arrived “when other men had eaten and forgotten” (7) because they had to travel to a distant stream.
Obika, who is Matefi’s son, returns to Matefi’s hut after Ezeulu finishes eating. He also complains about the food, although “it was clear he had drunk too much palm wine again” (10). While handsome and strong, Obika is spoiled; his father’s favorite, his half-brother Edogo, is the more careful and responsible son.
Recently, when his half-sister Akueke (daughter of Ezeulu’s deceased first wife Okuata) returned home, Obika nearly killed her abusive husband, Ibe. With his friend, Ofoedu, he kidnapped the man from his village and carried him to their village “tied to a bed, almost dead” (11). Ezeulu ordered Ibe released, but the man was seriously injured. His kinsmen did not know what he had done to deserve the punishment. Once Akueke explained her abuse, the villagers “agreed that Ibe had stretched his arm too far, and so no one could blame Obika for defending his sister” (12).
After eating, Obika joins Oduche, Nwafo, and Edogo in their father’s hut to receive their orders for the next day. Edogo, as the eldest son, speaks “for all of them” (12). Ezeulu orders the boys to work on Obika’s homestead to make sure that it is ready for the arrival of his new wife.
Oduche interjects that he was to travel to Okperi to welcome their new teacher. Ezeulu objects—even though he assigned Oduche as his representative to Wintabota, he insists that duty to Ezeulu’s household come first. He wants Oduche to tell the white people that they “should know the custom of this land,” that on Afo, his “sons and [wives] and [son’s wives] work for [him]” (13).
Chapter 2 Summary
Chapter 2 begins with Ezeulu’s reflections on “the dead fathers of Umuaro,” his village, looking on their people from “Ani-Mo” (14), the afterlife. They would be astonished that Umuaro was warring with Okperi.
This division disregards Ulu’s work to create Umuaro. Long ago, the deity united the six villages and strengthened them so that “they were never again beaten by an enemy” (15). In the “new age,” they became “sorely divided” (14). Ezeulu remembers that Umuaro went to war with Okperi five years previous, despite his warnings “that Ulu would not fight an unjust war” (15).
The day that they decided to go to war, Ezeulu called for peace by retelling a story that solidified Umuaro’s indebtedness to Okperi. But Nwaka, who claimed that Ezeulu spoke “about events which are older than Umuaro itself” (15), told a different story. In Nwaka’s eyes, just because the Okperi and Umuaro families intermarried doesn’t mean that in “this mingling” men should “lose the heart to fight” (16).
All six villages supported Nwaka. They chose Akukalia, a “fiery” man, to “carry the white clay and the new palm front to his motherland, Okperi” (17). He, like Ezeulu, had a female relative who had intermarried. One old man speaks up to remind Akukalia and others that he is sent “to place the choice of war or peace before” (17) Okperi, not directly to fight. The white clay would symbolize peace, whereas the palm frond would symbolize war.
Although Ezeulu had called his fellow villagers to remember that “if in truth the farmland is ours, Ulu will fight on our side” (18), they send the call to war anyway. Akukalia and the men who accompanied him went on Eke, the market day. The market at Okperi was well-known and well-attended because of Nwanyieke, the deity who cared for it.
Ezeulu imagines the conversations between the men as they approach the market. They explain that the white man, by telling villages not to “fight while [he is] around,” creates space for “the younger and weaker of the two” to “swell himself up and to boast” (19). Okperi took hold of land that, and in their eyes, it belongs to Umuaro. Akukalia reminds them to focus on their mission, not to ask provoking questions, for the people of Okperi “are very difficult people” (20).
At Uduezue’s house, home of Akukalia’s closest relative, they ask to be seen by the rulers of Okperi. Uduezue made the peaceful greeting of offering a kolanut, then offered white clay to draw lines on the floor, another sign of peace. But the guests “rebuffed the token of goodwill between host and guest” (21).
Akukalia grew some fondness for his mother’s land as he walked through it to the elders. The elders call him “Son of our Daughter” (21). They are unhappy that he has come with business on Eke, or market, day, when habit has it that “Okperi people do not have other business” (22). As they mock Akukalia’s ignorance, they enrage him. He begins to “shout like a castrated bull” (23). Because Akukalia was secretly impotent, this insult angers him more than anything, and he begins to fight, easily injuring Ebo’s head.
In his rage, Akukalia breaks Ebo’s “ikenga,” which represents “the strength of his right arm” (24). In return, Ebo shoots Akukalia with a shotgun. The same day, Akukalia’s dead body is carried home to Umuaro.
What bothers the villagers most is that “Okperi had not cared to say anything beyond returning the corpse” (24), which is a sign of contempt. Ezeulu speaks out in this astonished moment to remind the villagers that, just as Akukalia challenged his chi, so too was Umuaro “challenging its chi” (26) by entering into war.
After Akukalia’s action, the village was no longer certain of its decision to go to war: “Umuaro was divided in two” (26). Where Ezeulu uses Ulu as his reasoning to avoid war, Nwaka argues that Ezeulu “is a man of ambition; he wants to be king, priest, diviner, all” (26).
As he remembers this ominous start to the conflict, and the ominous splitting of his village, he also remembers that “the white man, Wintabota, brought soldiers to Umuaro and stopped” (28) the war soon after it began. White men were afraid of the fighting, and they took all guns away from villagers. They “sat in judgement over Umuaro and Okperi and gave the disputed land to Okperi” (28).
Chapter 3 Summary
Chapter 3 switches to the perspective of local colonial leader Captain T. K. Winterbottom. In the midwinter heat, without the December harmattan, Winterbottom struggles to sleep and stay healthy. After 15 years of service, he is “a hardened coaster, and although the climate still made him irritable and limp, he would not now exchange the life for the comfort of Europe” (30). He is fully convinced of the importance of Britain’s mission in Africa.
Winterbottom is stationed at Okperi, which is “not a very big station” (31). Only a few British people live there, including Tony Clarke, a recent arrival and the Assistant District Officer, and Wright, a man infamous for his behavior with “native women” (32). For his transgressions, Winterbottom banned Wright from “the club” (32).
Clarke is reading The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger, lent to him by Winterbottom. He is inspired by a passage about British men who take up “the call” overseas, “braving the climate, taking the risks, playing [their] best in the game of life” (33). After his reading time, Clarke meets Winterbottom.
A “Small Boy” whom Winterbottom calls “fine specimen” (35) brings Clarke a brandy and ginger ale. The two men watch as “thousands of flying ants” (35) swarm, but Winterbottom assures Clarke that the ants do not bite. The two men drink more than Clarke wants to, and Winterbottom shows off what he seems to know about the local people.
In his eyes, Okperi is in the right, where Umuaro “has remained backward” by rejecting “missionaries and government” (36). He is proud of the name “Otiji-Egbe,” which means “Breaker of Guns” (36). Clarke is curious about the village, which is six miles away but, Winterbottom explains, “to the native that’s a foreign country” (36).
Winterbottom explains that, during their testimonies about the killing that started the war, the locals “without exception” lied “like children” (37). Only one man, Ezeulu, who is “very light in complexion, almost red,” testifies “against his own people” (37).
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
The first three chapters of Arrow of God establish the central conflicts, myths, and perspectives of the story. Within Umuaro, Ezeulu represents spiritual and historical traditions upon which the village, established through the union of six villages, stands. Nwaka, who opposes him and incites the village to war against Okperi, represents a force in the tribe that hopes to resist the influence of white people in local matters. And Captain Winterbottom, local white authority, looks upon both tradition and tradition breaker as “like children” (37), part of a network of people waiting to be changed.
Within Umuaro and Okperi, family and ritual are conjoined and principal elements of local life. Ezeulu’s home is full of his wives and children. When his most beloved son, Obika, nearly kills his sister’s abusive husband, “no one could blame [him] for defending his sister” (12) in such a violent manner. Still, Ezeulu expects his children to see him as primary authority. When his son Oduche tries to get out of his family work to fulfill a responsibility to white authorities, Ezeulu wants Oduche to tell the white people that they “should know the custom of this land,” that on Afo, his “sons and [wives] and [son’s wives] work for [him]” (13). The same obligations to family arise when Akukalia delivers the offering of war and peace to his own family in Okperi. However, they are astonished that he does not remember and respect village customs.
Winterbottom believes that he understands local customs. Like the author of Pacification, the book he gives to Clarke, Winterbottom believes that through devoted study of the Ibo people around them he has answered the “call” to transform them into British people. He knows the conflict that began the war between the tribes, down to the ikenga, which he calls “the most important fetish in the Ibo man’s arsenal” (37). Believing himself ultimate authority, Winterbottom proudly remembers that he stepped into “the question of the ownership of the piece of land which was the remote cause” and found “without any shade of doubt that it belonged to Okperi” (37). With his system of logic and questioning, he believes in his own understanding of local conflicts and ability to organize them.
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