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 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary
Over the five years after Winterbottom broke guns in Umuaro, Ezeulu and Nwaka’s conflict within the village grows. Even after Nwaka seems to defy the gods, or suggest that Ulu would abandon the village, he “[survives] his rashness” (40). Over time, it emerges that Ezidemili, priest of Idemili, supports Nwaka. Ezeulu knows that the priests of other gods are unhappy “with their secondary role since the villages got together and made Ulu and put him over the older deities” (41).
Ezidemili and Nwaka, friends since infancy, come together against Ezeulu until Ezidemili becomes “Ezeulu’s mortal enemy” (41). While they drink wine one day, Nwaka incites Ezidemili to tell about Idemili, the “Pillar of Water” (41) who holds up the raincloud. Idemili should not be buried in earth as a result. Nwaka explains that “the first Ezeulu was an envious man like the present one” and he “ask[s] his people to bury him with the ancient and awesome ritual accorded to the priest of Idemili” (42).
Ezeulu thinks differently about the village, its gods, and its ancestry. From his compound he can hear the bells at the church nearby. At first, he had sent Oduche to learn about the white man’s deity so that he could learn some of his famed wisdom. Now, Ezeulu fears not only Nwaka but that white man’s religion, which is “like a leper” (42). He recognizes that, if white people want to take over, they likely want to embrace Oduche as one of their own.
One day, Oduche’s box, a locked box made for him by a mission carpenter, begins to move. Women and children marvel at it. When Ezeulu finally opens the box, they find “an exhausted royal python” (44), an astonishing phenomenon. The snake in a box is “an abomination,” a medicine that they pray will “lose its potency” (44).
Ezeulu cries out for Oduche, who he claims he “shall kill” (45). Ugoye, Oduche’s mother, begins to cry. Others encourage her to send Oduche to his kinsmen, to protect him from his father and Ezidemili, whose deity “owned the royal python” (45).
Although Ugoye and Oduche were both reluctant for Oduche to go to church, Oduche quickly enjoyed learning there. One man, Blackett, was a West Indian missionary. He impressed Oduche because “this man although black had more knowledge than white men” and “Oduche thought that if he could get one-tenth of Blackett’s knowledge he would be a great man in Umuaro” (46).
One of the local converts, John Goodcountry, teaches Oduche about how local Christians “must be ready to die for the faith” (47). Killing and eating a python was the ultimate test of faith, and it would get you killed. This is what happened to Moses Unachukwu, “the first and the most famous convert in Umuaro” (47). After a debate with Goodcountry, Oduche decides to prove his faith by killing a python.
Initially, Oduche tries to smash the python’s head in secret, but he cannot “bring himself to smash its head” (50). Instead, he places the snake inside a box and plans to wait for it to “die for lack of air” (50).
On the day that Ezeulu discovers the python, Edogo, another of his sons, was finishing his mask for a new ancestral spirit. He was prepared to finish in time for the upcoming Festival of the Pumpkin Leaves. He overhears men on the street speaking of the incident. One of the men on the street tells the others that “what that man Ezeulu will bring to Umuaro is pregnant and nursing a baby at the same time” (52).
Edogo rushes to tell his father, who is already extremely angry. Ezeulu is unhappy that his son did not defend him in public, but Edogo stays calm in the face of his rage. Ezeulu laments Obika’s temper, yet he tells Edogo that he would prefer that rage to “this cold ash” (53).
Later in the day, a young man from Umunneora, Ezidemili’s village, delivers a message to Ezeulu. Ezidemili is curious of how Ezeulu will “purify [his] house of the abomination” (53). Ezeulu sends the message to “tell Ezidemili to eat shit” (53). He laments the fact that “the world is no longer what it was” (53), and then he sends the boy away.
Chapter 5 Summary
Captain Winterbottom, upset by a letter sent to him by a superior who had been promoted before him, stands at his window to watch the prisoners who play music while they cut his grass. When he shouts at them to quiet down, the officer with them moves the group, and then they start singing again.
The letter from his new superior outlines a new policy of “indirect rule” through “native institutions” (56). Instead of white people ruling, the policy calls “to purge the native system of its abuses to build a higher civilization upon the soundly rooted native stock” (56). Rather than destroying “the African Atmosphere, the African mind” (56), the Lieutenant Governor wants to preserve it.
This message, to Winterbottom, was written by men who have not spent much time in his colony. He was a man who “knew his African and knew what he was talking about” but was “constantly overruled by starry-eyed fellows at headquarters” (57). Winterbottom remembers when he, against his judgment, followed orders to appoint a native chief in Okperi who quickly “set up an illegal court and a private prison” (57). After a massive extortion scheme, Winterbottom’s belief was affirmed: there was an “elemental cruelty in the psychological make-up of the native that the starry-eyed European” (58) could not understand. The chief made himself a king. This was the effect of British rule, “making a dozen mushroom kings grow where there was none before” (59).
Winterbottom sleeps on the message, but he is largely decided. Even though he does not want to install a leader in Umuaro to please those above him and heighten his chance at promotion, he will do so. Ezeulu will be the chief of Umuaro.
Chapter 6 Summary
As Winterbottom thinks of him, Ezeulu recognizes that his son’s actions are “a very serious matter” (60). He notices that his friends fall away. When he asks Ugoye where to find his son, she resists telling him. She tries to bargain with him, making him promise that Oduche will not need to return to church, but Ezeulu insists that he will continue attending.
Ezeulu does not “ignore the religious implications of Oduche’s act” (61). He knows that his son must arrange “a funeral for the snake almost as elaborate as a man’s funeral” (61) if he is to placate Idemili.
Soon after this event, Onwuzuligbo, one of Ezeulu’s in-laws, comes to ask about Obika’s reckless behavior against his sister’s husband. The two draw chalk lines and eat a kolanut, typical signs of peaceful greeting. Ezeulu calls for Akueke, who greets Onwuzuligbo peacefully. After she leaves, he explains that others from their village will come the next day “to whisper together like in-law and in-law” (62). This Ezeulu interprets as a happy event.
Ezeulu is eager for Akueke to return to her husband, yet he does not want to say so directly. He asks Ibe, her husband, to pay him “for taking care of [his] wife for one year” (63). The kinsmen acknowledge the debt. Ezeulu’s younger brother, Okeke Onenyi, also speaks up. He wonders whether “our in-law has come because he has no one to beat when he wakes up in the morning” (64). He promises, although reluctant, and Akueke agrees to return soon. Ezeulu warns him that while “a man and his wife must quarrel” it should never “end in fighting” (64).
Later that night, Ezeulu sends messengers to announce the upcoming Festival of the First Pumpkin Leaves. This message interrupts Akueke’s storytelling time between Obiageli, Ugoye’s daughter, and Nkechi, Akueke’s daughter.
Chapters 4-6 Analysis
Akueke’s broken marriage falls within a constellation of marriage and family relationships. Achebe uses marriages to show traditions of family connection and interconnection that complicate wars like the one between Umuaro and Okperi. Ezeulu’s own marriages, especially with his head wife, Matefi, are often plagued with disagreements. Ugoye resists the punishment for her son, Oduche, by using what power she has—silence. Still, Ezeulu’s brother’s advice to Akueke’s husband, that although “a man and his wife must quarrel” it should never “end in fighting” (64) is emblematic of a larger system of ethics and care. Akueke’s marriage connects two villages, and just as it is broken, so too is the relationship between the villages, which has taken normal disagreement too far.
Customary behavior and ethics are also skewed by the arrival of the “White Man.” As Winterbottom’s passages show, he knows many facts about the people of Umuaro and Okperi, but he does not quite understand their allegiances and behaviors. When Oduche tries to kill the king python, he does so to prove allegiance to a confusing new set of rules and behaviors brought by Christianity. When Ezidemili is curious of how Ezeulu will “purify [his] house of the abomination,” Ezeulu sends the message to “tell Ezidemili to eat shit” (53). Dealing with the fallout from the introduction of a new religion leads preexisting conflict to the breaking point.
Even Winterbottom can recognize the negative effects of British policies. He accounts for them differently, blaming the king-making policy of native rule that puts villages under the rule of one leader instead of a British administrator. In Okperi, the chief he installed made himself a king: this was the effect of British rule, “making a dozen mushroom kings grow where there was none before” (59). In this regard, Ezeulu shares Winterbottom’s grievance when he complains that “the world is no longer what it was” (53).
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