Principle and practice: The logic of cultural violence in Achebe's Things Fall Apart

College Literature, Winter 1999 by Hoegberg, David

This objection to Ikemefuna's killing would apply no matter what person from Mbaino was taken as a hostage. When we learn that the hostage is the son of one of the murderers, a second principle comes into play. In one of his "ethnographic" generalizations about the Igbo culture (Gikandi 1991, 46), the narrator explains Okonkwo's rise to prominence by saying: "Fortunately, among these people a man was judged according to his worth and not according to the worth of his father" (Achebe 1959, 11).

The ethnographic mode here claims to describe a general principle held by all the people, a central tenet or defining feature of their culture. This tenet seems related to the ability to question and change traditions mentioned above, for it asserts that the members of each generation are entitled to a fresh evaluation of their own merits. Neither worth nor worthlessness should be passed on automatically from father to son; rather, the process of "passing on" is to be interrupted by analysis, just as in the case of the Week of Peace punishment the passing on of a violent custom was interrupted by an analysis of its merits and drawbacks. Okonkwo personally benefits from the fact that this principle is widespread among his people, for it allows him to start with a "clean slate" without being held back by his father's failures. The narrator goes on to connect the principle explicitly with Okonkwo's relation to Ikemefuna. "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. Okonkwo had clearly washed his hands and so he ate with kings and elders. And that was how he came to look after the doomed lad who was sacrificed to the village of Umuofia by their neighbors to avoid war and bloodshed" (1959, 12; italics added). Because Okonkwo is not judged according to his father's worth, he becomes so respected in the clan that he is chosen to carry the threat of war to Mbaino and then chosen to keep Ikemefuna in his household. A great irony begins to emerge, however, when we read in the next chapter that Ikemefuna is selected as a hostage precisely because "his father had taken a hand in killing a daughter of Umuofia" (1959, 18). The boy himself is innocent of any wrongdoing but he is not selected at random from the young men of the village. He is judged according to the worth of his father, in direct contradiction of the principle in which we are told "these people" believe. Their attempt to bring about justice seems, according to their own most basic beliefs, to have created a new injustice. The original intent may have been to punish Ikemefuna's father by taking his precious son away from him, but the separation clearly punishes the son as well. At first Ikemefuna is afraid and tries to run away, then he refuses to eat and is ill for three weeks (1959, 29-30). Ikemefuna must feel like a slave or captive at this point, yet he is not guilty except insofar as he is tainted by his father's guilt. Is there any way to explain this contradiction in Igbo practice between the principle that worth is not tied to the father and the treatment of Ikemefuna? Is it intention or unwitting irony that the son who is being punished for his father's crime is placed under the care of a man who is conspicuous for not being judged by his father?