Mr. Fornnarino's English 2, Quiz 25

To answer Questions 13-18, please read the following passage from Chapter 4 of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. Choose the best responses to the prompts located next to the passage. There is one and only one correct answer to each prompt.

Chapter 4, page 26

" ‘Looking at a king's mouth,’ said an old man, ‘one would think he never sucked at his mother's breast.’ " He was talking about Okonkwo, who had risen so suddenly from great poverty and misfortune to be one of the lords of the clan. The old man bore no ill will towards Okonkwo. Indeed he respected him for his industry and success. But he was struck, as most people were, by Okonkwo's brusqueness in dealing with less successful men. Only a week ago a man had contradicted him at a kindred meeting which they held to discuss the next ancestral feast. Without looking at the man Okonkwo had said: " ‘This meeting is for men.’ The man who had contradicted him had no titles. That was why he had called him a woman. Okonkwo knew how to kill a man's spirit.

To answer Questions 19-23, please read the following passage from Chapter 5 of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. Choose the best responses to the prompts located next to the passage. There is one and only one correct answer to each prompt.

Chapter 5, Pages 44-45

“The drums were still beating, persistent and unchanging. Their sound was no longer a separate thing from the living village. It was like the pulsation of its heart. It throbbed in the air, in the sunshine, and even in the trees, and filled the village with excitement.

Ekwefi ladled her husband's share of the pottage into a bowl and covered it. Ezinma took it to him in his obi.

Okonkwo was sitting on a goatskin already eating his first wife's meal. Obiageli, who had brought it from her mother's hut, sat on the floor waiting for him to finish. Ezinma placed her mother's dish before him and sat with Obiageli.

‘Sit like a woman!’ Okonkwo shouted at her. Ezinma brought her two legs together and stretched them in front of her.

‘Father, will you go to see the wrestling?’ Ezinma asked after a suitable interval.

‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘Will you go?’

‘Yes.’ And after a pause she said: ‘Can I bring your chair for you?’

‘No, that is a boy's job.’ Okonkwo was specially fond of Ezinma. She looked very much like her mother, who was once the village beauty. But his fondness only showed on very rare occasions.

‘Obiageli broke her pot today,’ Ezinma said.

‘Yes, she has told me about it,’ Okonkwo said between mouthfuls.

‘Father,’ said Obiageli, ‘people should not talk when they are eating or pepper may go down the wrong way.’

‘That is very true. Do you hear that, Ezinma? You are older than Obiageli but she has more sense.’

He uncovered his second wife's dish and began to eat from it. Obiageli took the first dish and returned to her mother's hut. And then Nkechi came in, bringing the third dish. Nkechi was the daughter of Okonkwo's third wife.

In the distance the drums continued to beat.”

To answer Questions 24-27, please readthe following essay excerpt about Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. Choose the best responses to the prompts located next to the essay. There is one and only one correct answer to each prompt.

“Towards the end of the nineteenth century most European states migrated to Africa and other parts of the world where they established colonies. Nigeria was amongst other African nations that received visitors who were on a colonising mission; introducing their religion and culture that is later imposed on Igbo. The culture of the people of Umuofia (Igbo culture) is immensely threatened by this change. Achebe’s primary purpose of writing the novel is because he wants to educate his readers about the value of his culture as an African. Things Fall Apart provides readers with an insight of Igbo society right before the white missionaries’ invasion on their land. The invasion of the colonising force threatens to change almost every aspect of Igbo society; from religion, traditional gender roles and relations, family structure to trade. Consequently, Achebe blames the white missionaries’ colonial rule and/or invasion for the post-colonial oppressed Igbo culture; this oppression can be seen in terms of the oppressed social coherence between the individual and their society.”

Kenalemang, Lame Maatla. "7. Things Fall Apart." Representing the Race Things Fall Apart: An Analysis of Pre and Post-Colonial Igbo Society. Karlstads University. Web.