PART TWO (14- 19)

 

This part exhaustively talks about Okonkwo finding a home among his Mother’s kinsmen in Mbanta.  Okonkwo was well received by his mother’s kinsmen.

He was given  a plot of land to build his compound and two or three pieces of land on which to farm during the coming planting season. Okonkwo by this time was no longer his former self as the writer puts it ‘Okonkwo and his family worked very hard to plant a new farm. But it was like beginning life anew without the vigour and enthusiasm of youth like learning to become left-handed in old age. Work no longer had for him the pleasure it used to have’

   

 But it was Uchendu who observed the countenance of Okonkwo and did all he could to inspire life back into him. Okonkwo adapted gradually and with the  visit of Obierika he gradually bounced back . He brought the proceeds from the sale of Okonkwo’s yam tubers . he also hinted his friend of the arrival of the white men into Abame .

Two years later when Obierika visited Okonkwo it was a different story entirely as the writer puts it ‘The missionaries had come to Umuofia. They had built their church there, won a handful of converts and were already sending evangelists to the surrounding towns and villages’. And to worsen everything for Okonkwo Nwoye had joined the white man’s religion.

In chapter 17 what was termed and seen as worthless was indeed precious and valuable to the missionaries as the writer puts it ‘they offered them as much of the Evil forest as they cared to take. And to their greatest amazement the missionaries thanked them and burst into song’.

From the very first day the missionaries entered the Mbanta. Nwoye had been attracted to the new faith although he kept it secret. The white man’s religion was able to give him some sort of answers to his questions and somethings he thought were just not right and fair about his custom. At the end Nwoye was ready to give up his family for the white man’s religion. Okonkwo could not but think of the resemblance Nwoye has with his father. It compounded his sorrows, wishing that Ezinma was a male child as she understood him very well.

We saw  also in Mbanta how the osu  or outcasts  came into the church and their acceptance by the church. The villagers saw the church as a gathering of worthless people. These so called worthless people and outcastes saw the church as a body that has come to fight for their interest and spiritual well being. According to Mr. Kiaga  ‘Before God ; there is no slave of free. We all are children of God and we must receive these our brothers’. So Mr. Kiaga was able to hold his church in Mbanta together because of his firmness.

The new converts who previously had seen their gods as mighty had suddenly appeared to them as lifeless and powerless as one of the converts out of been over zealous killed one of the Royal Pythons, and such a person ( Okoli) died afterwards.

Part Two of this book started with the exile of Okonkwo that is , his life in Mbanta and subsequently ended with his departure having completed his seven years. Okonkwo threw a lavish and flamboyant party for his mother’s kinsmen appreciating then for accommodating him in his seven years in exile.