Chinua Achebe

Arrow of God

The above-mentioned novel (first published in 1964; second, revised edition in 1974) is, strangely, one of this author’s lesser- known works, although Achebe has to date published only five novels. I say “strangely” because this novel is, in the eyes of most critics (and, one suspects, in the author’s own estimation), his most accomplished and complex text. Arrow of God can in some ways be thought of as a re-doing of his first and most widely-known book, Things fall apart — in that it covers a very similar historical period (call it the “introduction” of British colonialism; its early impact on Igbo society in Eastern Nigeria).

The main difference between the two works is in the character of the main, male protagonists: Unlike Okonkwo in the earlier work, Ezeulu the high priest of Ulu is no insecure bully (although that is only the superficial side of Okonkwo), for the central protagonist in this later work stands in the proud tradition of a long line of high priests. In his family and in his community, conflicts and tensions run high and he himself is at the core of most of them, but Ezeulu participates in these various altercations with gusto and, mostly, with a sense of his own grandeur. There is something of the great aristocrat in Ezeulu and he is, until the very end, convinced that, even if he does not triumph in every combat, he should be doing so.

The novel opens with Ezeulu bitterly recalling one of his first defeats and, in his eyes, his clanspeople’s betrayal of the wisdom of Ulu, the clan’s “identity-god”, whose priest he is. Under the influence of the rhetoric of the richest man in the clan, Nwaka, the majority of the clan’s members earlier decided to pursue a “war of blame” with their neighbouring clan (in a territorial dispute). Predictably, their fighting, and the few lives lost, gave the recently- arrived British the opportunity to step in and “pacify” the warring natives, at once both validating the colonial presence in the region and assuming authority (and power) over both parties.

The “breaker-of-guns” is Captain Winterbottom, who — despite his frigidly European name — is no mere caricatured colonialist. For all his complacency, ignorance and insensitivity to the arrogant intrusiveness of his role, Winterbottom means well, and recognizes in Ezeulu a man of great worth. Unfortunately that very esteem, mixed with his lack of any real understanding of Igbo society and its political system, becomes the catalyst that will eventually set Ezeulu at odds with his own community.

Winterbottom (on orders “from above” to find an Igbo man whom the British can appoint as leader and through whom they can practice their new policy of “indirect rule”) sends for Ezeulu to come to “Government Hill” to be installed in his new position, but gets the firm answer that “Ezeulu does not leave his hut” (138). Winterbottom, furious that a mere “witchdoctor” can so defy and reject the “honour” about to be conferred upon him by the colonial powers, sends men to arrest Ezeulu, but in the interim himself falls dangerously ill from malaria. In another ironic twist, Ezeulu, who had expected to have the support of his clanspeople in rejecting the British “invitation” (since the Igbo do not have single, dominant leaders, but practise a type of village democracy or male republicanism), finds himself instead told (tauntingly) by his old enemy Nwaka to go ahead and visit Winterbottom, presented as the person with whom Ezeulu has chosen to side against the clan.

Filled with rage and bitterness at what seems to him a second and deeper betrayal by his people, Ezeulu does just that. On arrival he is put in the guard room by (the still desperately ill) Winterbottom’s Igbo subalterns, who shield Ezeulu from realising that he is a prisoner.

The greatest complication of Ezeulu’s stay in Winterbottom’s area is that he is not on duty to observe the arrival of two new moons, since (as Ulu’s priest) he is the agricultural “timekeeper” of the clan. Because of the two “lost” moons, the harvest cannot (after Ezeulu’s release) be announced on time and the clan faces starvation. Here, then, the Christians (missionaries and Igbo converts) find their opening: come to our harvest festival, they invite the clanspeople, and proceed to harvest your crops and feed your families — with Christian consecration. Still, many hesitate to do so.

It is during this period that Ezeulu, so set on his vengeance against his own people’s perceived “betrayals” of Ulu and himself, half-insanely convinces himself that it is all the god’s will, refusing all appeals to adapt his time-keeping to save the clan. He is, he believes, merely an arrow in the bow of the deity.

But his half-conscious project backfires in the worst possible way. Ezeulu’s most glamorous son, feeling duty bound to alleviate the hatred that his father’s ruling has caused, accepts (as a favour to a neighbour) a role in a funeral ceremony. Since the assignment is a terribly arduous night-time run at high speed throughout the village, the slight fever from which he is suffering makes this (he knows) a dangerous and unwise undertaking. He dons the heavy costume, executes the run, and falls down dead at the end of it — a young, newly-married man in the prime and pride of his life. This death finally cracks Ezeulu’s sanity. The high priest who could loftily deal with the British and gloatingly punish his own people even at the cost of starving with them, is broken by the sight of his most beloved son’s dead body - the sign, he now believes, that even his god has deserted him.

In a piece of this brevity one cannot give even a glimpse of the full density and complexity of this text — both in its depictions of social and familial life and the subtleties of individual psyches, and in its portrayal of the deep ironies of the political, religious and ideological transitions brought about in a pre-modern society by the impact of colonialism. Yet no reader of this text could fail to recognise the scope and depth of the work. Achebe achieves here that marvellous double vision that can simultaneously see the tragedy of the obliteration of the dignified Igbo society of the past and the ironic inevitability of the first incursions of “progress” and modernisation. Ezeulu, who had thought himself the victorious party in a two-sided conflict with both the British and his own, Igbo opposition, ends up as the scapegoat crushed between them. And yet, Achebe shows, this helps his people to cross the bridge to a future dispensation as no mere, simple defeat, but as a strategic move and a rite of passage, harsh and terrible as it may be. This is the perspective Achebe himself suggests — in his usual oblique fashion — to his readers in the Preface to the second edition of the novel.

An outline of this kind presents very crudely the careful interweavings of this work and terribly distorts its grave beauty — and its humour and benign irony. One can only urge aspirant readers to turn to the text for themselves.

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