Things Fall Apart - Traditional Igbo Flashcards
(18 cards)
Traditional Igbo
Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded very highly
Traditional Igbo
Proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten
Traditional Igbo
But I fear for you young people because you do not understand how strong is the bond of kinship. You do not know what it is to speak with one voice. (unnamed elder from Okonkwo’s Umunna)
Traditional Igbo
Age was respected among his people, but achievement was revered. As the elders said, if a child washed his hands he could eat with kings.
Traditional Igbo
Umuofia was feared by all its neighbours. It was powerful in war and in magic
Traditional Igbo
This man told him that the child was an ogbanje, one of those wicked children who, when they died, entered their mothers’ wombs to be born again.
Traditional Igbo
The land of the living was not far removed from the domain of the ancestors…A man’s life from birth to death was a series of transition rites which brought him nearer and nearer to his ancestors.
Traditional Igbo
A man belongs to his fatherland when things are good and life is sweet. But when there is sorrow and bitterness he finds refuge in his motherland.
Traditional Igbo
Okonkwo was deeply grieved. And it was not just a personal grief. He mourned for the clan, which he saw breaking up and falling apart, and he mourned for the warlike men of Umuofia, who had so unaccountably become soft like women.
Traditional Igbo
One of the greatest crimes a man could commit was to unmask an egwugwu in public, or to say or do anything which might reduce its immortal prestige in the eyes of the uninitiated. And this was what Enoch did.
Traditional Igbo
Umuofia was like a startled animal with ears erect, sniffling the silent, ominous air and not knowing which way to run.
Traditional Igbo
Okonkwo stood looking at the dead man. He knew that Umuofia would not go to war. He knew because they had let the other messengers escape. They had broken into tumult instead of action.
Traditional Igbo
Okonkwo felt a cold shudder run through him at the terrible prospect, like the prospect of annihilation.
Traditional Igbo
“You have not eaten for two days,” said [Okonkwo’s] daughter Ezinma when she brought the food to him…“She should have been born a boy,” he thought
Traditional Igbo
Everybody knew she was an ogbanje….But she had lived so long that perhaps she had decided to stay. Some of them did become tired of their evil rounds of birth and death, or took pity on their mothers, and stayed. Ekwefi believed deep inside her that Ezinma had come to stay.
Traditional Igbo
Okonkwo was deeply grieved. And it was not just a personal grief. He mourned for the clan. He mourned for the warlike men of Umuofia, who had so unaccountably become soft like women.
Traditional Igbo
Dangerous animals become even more sinister and uncanny in the dark
Traditional Igbo
They set fire to his houses…it ws the justice of the earth goddess and they were merely her messengers. They had no hatred in their hearts against Okonkwo…They were merely cleansing the land which Okonkwo had polluted with the blood of a clansman
