Things Fall Apart: Chapter 15

Obierika comes to visit Okonkwo to his new village, to see how he is doing and to take him some money from his yams that he had been selling. Obierika tells him about the White man that arrived to the village, he came riding in an iron horse, everyone was afraid and the Oracle ordered to kill him. They tied his horse to a tree and didn’t say anything when he was killed. Some time later other white men came to Umofia and shoot everyone in the market place.

After hearing the story Obierika told them, Okonkwo used this situation to show his family a lesson. He tells a tale about Mother Kite, who sent his daughter to buy food. When her daughter returns, she had brought a duckling and told her that the duckling’s mother hadn’t said anything to her. Mother Kite asks her daughter to return the duckling, her daughter goes to the market and this time returns with a chick. Mother Kite tells her that they will eat it beacause the chick’s mother had cried for him.

Okonkwo says that there is something rare and mysterious hidden under silence. You must not kill someone who remains silent because you won’t know what that person can make later. When the daughter of Mother Kite went with the chick’s mother, she shouted and cried so they knew that if they killed and ate the chick the mother would shout and cry. 

For example, if everytime your friend gets mad she screams, cries and makes a fuss about it, you will know that when you do something bad to him he will react that way. In the other side, a person who says nothing and when he gets mad stays in silence, will not show you his feelings and you will never know what he can be thinking or what he is planning to do. So this is what happened with the white man, he was killed and stayed silent but then his clan returned and killed everybody else. “Never kill a man who says nothing.”

Reference:

Achebe, C. (1994). Things fall apart. New York, Anchor Books.