The theme of this story by Chinua Achebe is culture clash. He addresses it by describing some of the changes that took place in the lives of his people, the Ibo (Igbo) of South-Eastern Nigeria, as they reconciled their traditional values and beliefs with the effects of Westernization under British colonial rule. One of the biggest changes observed by the narrator is the move from a village-based to urbanized society, which has resulted in a resurgence of smallpox. We also learn how some people, including the narrator, try to minimize such conflicts by maintaining a foot in both cultural camps.
Original Text / PDF (1,303 words)
General Comments
The protagonist, Julius Obi, is a ‘highly educated’ office worker who supposedly knows better than to believe in local superstitions. However, like his deeply Christian future mother-in-law, he covers himself both ways by still observing some of them. Unfortunately, in trying to avoid breaking one superstitious rule (being caught outside by the night-spirit) he literally ‘breaks’ another by stepping on a sacrificial egg.
The setting for the story must be in or near the current Nigerian city of Ontisha, as this is the only major marketplace and trading port close to the confluence of the Niger and Anambara (Omambala) Rivers. We are told that Julius finished his ‘Standard Six’ in 1920. As he appears to be fairly new in the clerk’s job, the events described would most likely be taking place in the mid 1920’s.
Achebe squeezes a lot of cultural information into such a few words. We learn that according to Ibo beliefs, important events in daily life are controlled by different deities. The traditional market day, Nkwo, begins with the spirit that presides over it casting a spell to attract people. Each day ends with the sounding of an ekwe (gong) signaling that people must hurry home before the night-spirit races through the town. Julius is warned about the beautiful but dangerous mammy-wota (water spirits) from the river, and the European scourge smallpox is personified with the name of the evil spirit kitika. Finally, we learn about the placement of sacrificial eggs which, if stepped on, can transfer misfortune from one person to another.
It is thought that smallpox was brought to Nigeria by slave traders as far back as the early 1500s. However, the disease did not become endemic until the period of British colonial rule, which began in the late 1800s. Julius ascribes this to the change from a village-based society (When Umuru had been a little village, it had been swept and kept clean by its handful of inhabitants.) to an urbanized one (But now it had grown into a busy, sprawling, crowded, and dirty river port.) Smallpox could therefore play an allegorical role in the story, delivering a broader message about the destructive effects of British Imperialism on Nigeria’s traditional culture and society.
At the end of the story we have Julius mourning his fiance and her mother as he re-lives the last night he saw them. It is likely that the two women knew they had been exposed to smallpox at the time, hence the mother’s warning for him to stay away and Janet’s unusually chaste good-bye handshake. Interestingly, if this is the case, Julius’s bad luck began before he stepped on the sacrificial egg!