Mr. Fornnarino's English 2, Practice Quiz 26 for ELL Students

To answer Questions 11-16, please read the following passage from Chapter 8 of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. Choose the best responses to the prompts next to the passage. There is one and only one correct answer to each prompt.

Chapter 8, pages 63-65

   “Okonkwo did not taste any food for two days after the death of Ikemefuna. He drank palm wine from morning till night, and his eyes were red and fierce like the eyes of a rat when it was caught by the tail and dashed against the floor. He called his son, Nwoye, to sit with him in his obi. But the boy was afraid of him and slipped out of the hut as soon as he noticed him dozing.

He did not sleep at night. He tried not to think about Ikemefuna, but the more he tried the more he thought about him. Once he got up from bed and walked about his compound. But he was so weak that his legs could hardly carry him. He felt like a drunken giant walking with the limbs of a mosquito. Now and then a cold shiver descended on his head and spread down his body.

   On the third day he asked his second wife, Ekwefi, to roast plantains for him. She prepared it the way he liked--with slices of oil-bean and fish.

   ‘You have not eaten for two days,’ said his daughter Ezinma when she brought the food to him. ‘So you must finish this.’ She sat down and stretched her legs in front of her. Okonkwo ate the food absent-mindedly. 'She should have been a boy,' he thought as he looked at his ten-year-old daughter. He passed her a piece of fish...

   ...Ezinma took the dish in one hand and the empty water bowl in the other and went back to her mother's hut. ‘She should have been a boy,’ Okonkwo said to himself again. His mind went back to Ikemefuna and he shivered. If only he could find some work to do he would be able to forget. But it was the season of rest between the harvest and the next planting season. The only work that men did at this time was covering the walls of their compound with new palm fronds. And Okonkwo had already done that. He had finished it on the very day the locusts came, when he had worked on one side of the wall and Ikemefuna and Nwoye on the other.

   ‘When did you become a shivering old woman,’ Okonkwo asked himself, ‘you, who are known in all the nine villages for your valour in war? How can a man who has killed five men in battle fall to pieces because he has added a boy to their number? Okonkwo, you have become a woman indeed.’ "

Note: The author writes that Okonkwo did not eat for two days after Ikemefuna's death. Okonkwo's eyes looked like a rat's eyes after it had been thrown to the floor. Okonkwo wanted his son Nwoye to be with him, but Nwoye was afraid. On the third day, his daughter Ezinma brought him food. Okonkwo thought she was strong and should have been a boy. Okonkwo asked himself why he was acting like a woman now when he had not acted like a woman when he fought in war.

To answer Questions 17-21, please read the following passage from Chapter 8 of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. Choose the best responses to the prompts next to the passage. There is one and only one correct answer to each prompt.

Chapter 9, Page 79

“By the time Onwumbiko died, Ekwefi had become a very bitter woman. Her husband's first wife had already had three sons, all strong and healthy. When she had borne her third son in succession, Okonkwo had slaughtered a goat for her, as was the custom. Ekwefi had nothing but good wishes for her. But she had grown so bitter about her own chi that she could not rejoice with others over their good fortune. And so, on the day that Nwoye's mother celebrated the birth of her three sons with feasting and music, Ekwefi was the only person in the happy company who went about with a cloud on her brow. Her husband's wife took this for malevolence, as husbands' wives were wont to. How could she know that Ekwefi's bitterness did not flow outwards to others but inwards into her own soul, that she did not blame others for their good fortune but her own evil chi who denied her any?”

Note: The author says Ekwefi was a bitter woman (an unhappy woman) because her chi (her personal god) did not give her good fortune. Her husband's first wife had three healthy sons and a party to celebrate. Ekwefi was happy for the first wife, but Ekwefi could not celebrate because she was unhappy. The first wife thought Ekwefi wanted to hurt her because Ekwefi was not celebrating. She did not understand that Ekwefi was not angry at others; she was angry at her bad chi, her bad personal god.

To answer Questions 22-26, please read the following essay excerpt about Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. Choose the best responses to the prompts next to the excerpt. There is one and only one correct answer to each prompt.

In Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe tells two different stories at the same time. One is of Okonkwo, the villager whose rise to power is halted because of all of his misfortunes. The other is of Okonkwo’s village, Umuofia, and its struggle to hold on to its cultural traditions while facing colonialism from the West. The title, Things Fall Apart, describes perfectly what happens to both Okonkwo and his village. The cultural traditions of Umuofia and Okonkwo himself both fall apart, and both become influenced by the West. In Things Fall Apart, Achebe uses Okonkwo and the village’s fall to show how African culture, as well as other cultures around the world, suffered as a result of Westernization. In the book, Achebe focuses mainly on the character of Okonkwo. Okonkwo’s story follows the general pattern of a Greek tragedy. He experiences many successes in the beginning, but everything eventually comes crashing down on him. His early life is the typical success story. He starts poor, but works hard to earn everyone’s respect. From the beginning he is disgusted with his father. He is a lazy old man who borrows money and never pays it back. Okonkwo realizes that he does not want to be like his father, and it is this hatred that drives him to work hard. After his father’s death, Okonkwo pays off his debts, and starts his long journey to the top of the clan. In a short time, Okonkwo’s hard work pays off and he becomes one of the village’s most respected members. He earns three out of the four village titles; he is recognized as the greatest warrior in Umuofia; he takes three wives and has many children. He is almost to the top of the clan when his journey to greatness starts to crumble. Because of a scuffle with one of the nearby villages, Okonkwo is given a boy to take care of. The boy, Ikemefuna, shows many similarities to Okonkwo and they become very close. He sees Okonkwo as a father figure, and even calls him “father.”Okonkwo even puts him before his true son, Nwoye. But one day the village elders decide that he has gotten too close and that he needs to be killed. Okonkwo eventually deals the final blow that kills Ikemefuna, to show that he is not weak. The grief that follows starts Okonkwo on his downfall.

"Free Essays Must Be Free!TM." Essay Papers Things Fall Apart. Web. 19 Mar. 2017.

Note: The essay writer says Chinua Achebe wrote a story about a villager and a village for the purpose of showing how the Westernization of Africa hurt people and villages.

Achebe's story is like a Greek story, a Greek tragedy, where the main character has successes, but later does not do well. One reason why Okonkwo did not do well was because he loved a boy named Ikemefuna more than he loved his own son, Nwoye. The village elders did not like how close Okonkwo and Ikemefuna were. Okonkwo wanted the elders to think he was strong, so he killed Ikemefuna.

The essay writer tells the story of the book for people who have not read it. It is ironic (the opposite of what we think will happen) that Okonkwo killed Ikemefuna because we do not expect people to kill someone they are close to.