Summary
Having admitted that he can’t marry Ugoye, Nnaemeka tells his father that it is impossible for him to go through with the arranged marriage his father has proposed because he doesn’t love the woman. Nnaemeka’s father replies that nobody said Nnaemeka loved her—and why should he? Nnaemeka begins to say that marriage is different today, but his father interrupts to say that nothing is different: what a person “looks for in a wife are a good character and a Christian background.”
Nnaemeka sees there is no hope arguing that contemporary marriage privileges love over everything else. He pivots to admitting that he is already engaged to marry another woman who has all of Ugoye’s good qualities. His father cannot believe his ears. Nnaemeka explains that Nene is a good Christian and teaches at a girls’ school in Lagos.
Nnaemeka’s father tells his son that no Christian woman should teach, explaining that St. Paul wrote in his letter to the Corinthians that women should keep silent. Nnaemeka’s father rises and begins to pace. The narrator comments that his father had a history of condemning church leaders who encouraged women to teach. After getting out some of his strong emotions about the subject, Nnaemeka’s father asks his son whose daughter Nene is.
Nnaemeka says she is Nene Atang from Calabar, and she is the only girl he can marry. Nnaemeka expects that his rash reply will be met with a flood of threatening speech, but his father merely walks away into his room. Nnaemeka is perplexed by his father’s silence, which he finds infinitely more menacing than the storm he expected. His father doesn’t eat that night. A day later, Nnaemeka’s father tries again to dissuade him from marrying Nene, but Nnaemeka’s heart is hardened, and his father gives up. Nnaemeka’s father says whoever put the idea in his head may as well have cut Nnaemeka’s throat, and that it is Satan’s work. Nnaemeka tells his father that he will change his mind when he meets Nene. His father replies that he will never meet her.
From that night forward, Nnaemeka’s father barely speaks to his son. Nonetheless, Nnaemeka’s father holds out hope that the engagement will pass away. The narrator comments that an Ibo man has never married a woman who speaks a different tongue. Nnaemeka goes back to Lagos. News travels about Nnaemeka’s father’s predicament, and other men come to commiserate. One man says the Lord said in the Bible that “Sons shall rise against their Fathers.” Another man says it is the beginning of the end.
To move the conversation away from the theological, Madubowu, a practical man, seeks to bring the conversation to an ordinary level, asking Nnaemeka’s father if he has thought to consult a native doctor about his son. Nnaemeka’s father says Nnaemeka isn’t sick. Madubowu says the boy’s mind is diseased and only a good herbalist can bring him to his senses. He says that Amalile is the medicine he requires—the same medicine women apply to recapture their husbands’ straying affection.
Nnaemeka’s father—known for being less superstitious than his neighbors—refuses to call in a native doctor. Nnaemeka’s father says he will not be another Mrs. Ochuba, and that if his son wants to kill himself then he will let him do it with his own hands. Nnaemeka’s father says it is not for him to help his son die.
Continuing to speak in cryptic terms, Madubogwu says it was Mrs. Ochuba’s own fault: she was a clever woman, but she should have gone to an honest herbalist. Jonathan says she was a wicked murderess, explaining that the medicine was prepared for her husband, and thus he is sure it would have been perfectly beneficial to him. Jonathan says it was wicked to put the medicine in the herbalist’s food and say you were “only trying it out.”
Analysis
In the second section of the story, Achebe draws out the tensions between tradition and modernity, and between arranged marriage and love. Having traveled to his home village to tell his father that he can’t marry Ugoye, the woman his father has arranged for him to marry, Nnaemeka tries to reason that he can’t marry Ugoye because he does not love her. Okeke’s reply—“Nobody said you did. Why should you?”—is comically dismissive. Nnaemeka says, “Marriage today is different,” beginning to explain that the contemporary idea around marriage Nnaemeka has absorbed prize love over everything. But Okeke is too steeped in his ways, too attached to the ways of the village that he has always known, and so insists upon the primacy of arranged marriage over marrying for love.
Realizing that his father is too obstinate to be convinced by his line of argument, Nnaemeka moves away from abstract reasoning to undeniable facts, revealing that he is already engaged to Nene. The news confounds Okeke, as Nnaemeka expected it would. Okeke rejects the idea that his son is engaged on the grounds that love means nothing when looking for a partner, that the Bible says women should be silent and therefore not allowed to teach, and because Nene is from Calabar, meaning she is not an Ibo.
Okeke is clearly angry, but the explosion of scorn Nnaemeka anticipates does not come. Instead, Okeke uncharacteristically goes quiet and retires to his bedroom for the night. This instance of situational irony suggests that Nnaemeka has underestimated his father’s attachment to tradition. While Nnaemeka expected his father would be angry with him, he did not expect his father would recede emotionally. In this way, Nnaemeka seriously underestimates his father’s obstinacy—the quality of being unwaveringly stubborn.
After Okeke vows never to meet Nene, Nnaemeka travels back to Lagos. However, the narrative point of view stays with Okeke in the village, where he prays that the engagement will not proceed. News of Okeke’s predicament spreads as locals commiserate with him. One man suggests that Nnaemeka’s betrayal portends the beginning of the end for them while another alludes to the Christian Bible, citing the Lord’s prediction that “Sons shall rise against their Fathers.”
The unique mix of traditional Ibo culture and the adoption of Christianity is evident in how the conversation easily moves from talk of the Bible to talk of hiring a native doctor to prepare an herbal medicine for Nnaemeka. Some of the villagers recommend Amalile, the same medicine women use to keep their cheating husbands faithful. Okeke, despite his stubborn adherence to certain traditions, is considered progressive within the village, and so dismisses Amalile as superstition. Furthermore, he cites what happened when a local woman named Mrs. Ochuba tested her herbalist’s medicine by putting it in the herbalist’s food, a decision that resulted in the herbalist’s death. With this discussion of the merits of traditional herbal medicine, Achebe shows how even among the villagers there is tension between adherence to tradition and the embrace of modernity.
