"Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe, Chapters 1–3

In his day he was lazy and improvident and was quite incapable of thinking about tomorrow.

When they had eaten they talked about many things: about the heavy rains which were drowning the yams, about the next ancestral feast and about the impending war with the village of Mbaino.

He could hear in his mind's ear the blood-stirring and intricate rhythms of the ekwe and the udu and the ogene, and he could hear his own flute weaving in and out of them, decorating them with a colorful and plaintive tune.

Okonkwo wondered what was amiss, for he knew certainly that something was amiss.

He had discerned a clear overtone of tragedy in the crier's voice, and even now he could still hear it as it grew dimmer and dimmer in the distance.

An ultimatum was immediately dispatched to Mbaino asking them to choose between war on the one hand, and on the other the offer of a young man and a virgin as compensation.

And if anybody was so foolhardy as to pass by the shrine after dusk he was sure to see the old woman hopping about.

And so when Okonkwo of Umuofia arrived at Mbaino as the proud and imperious emissary of war, he was treated with great honor and respect, and two days later he returned home with a lad of fifteen and a young virgin.

And so when Okonkwo of Umuofia arrived at Mbaino as the proud and imperious emissary of war, he was treated with great honor and respect, and two days later he returned home with a lad of fifteen and a young virgin.

As for the boy, he belonged to the clan as a whole, and there was no hurry to decide his fate. Okonkwo was, therefore, asked on behalf of the clan to look after him in the interim.

But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness. It was deeper and more intimate than the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw.

Okonkwo's first son, Nwoye, was then twelve years old but was already causing his father great anxiety for his incipient laziness.

He died of the swelling which was an abomination to the earth goddess.

And indeed he was possessed by the fear of his father's contemptible life and shameful death.

The yams put on luxuriant green leaves, but every farmer knew that without sunshine the tubers would not grow.