As Okonkwo sits in his obi with Nwoye and Ikemefuna, happily munching on crunchy locusts, a village elder comes and asks to speak to him outside. When they are out of earshot of the boys, he tells Okonkwo that the clan council has decided to kill Ikemefuna, but that Okonkwo should not participate because the boy calls him father. The next day, a group of elders from all nine villages of Umuofia come to Okonkwo and speak to him in low tones. After they leave, Okonkwo sits quietly for a long time, resting his chin on his hands. Then he calls Ikemefuna and tells him that he is going home to his mother, but somehow Ikemefuna does not believe him. He remembers that the last time a group of men spoke to his father in low tones, he was taken away from home, so he thinks it’s usually a sign of bad things to come.
Nwoye, overhearing Okonkwo, bursts into tears and his father beats him. Then he tells his mother that Ikemefuna is going home, and his mother drops her pestle and sighs, “Poor child!” The next day, the men return with a pot of wine, which they give to Ikemefuna to carry. A deathly silence falls over Okonkwo’s compound, and Nwoye spends the day sitting in his mother’s hut with tears in his eyes.
As they leave the village, the men chatter a little, but soon they too fall silent. There is the sound of drums in the distance, and the men suspect that someone is celebrating taking a title, but they can’t pinpoint the sound. Ikemefuna thinks about his mother and little sister and whether he’ll recognise them. Then it occurs to him that his mother is dead. He tries to put it out of his mind by playing his usual form of fortune telling: he sings a song in his head to the rhythm of his steps, and tells himself that if the last syllable falls at the moment he takes a step with his right foot, then his mother is alive, and if it falls at the moment he takes a step with his left foot, then his mother is… not dead, but rather ill. The first time it falls on his right foot and he’s happy. He tries it again and it falls on his left foot, but he tells himself that the second time doesn’t count. One of the men walking behind him clears his throat. Ikemefuna looks back and the man tells him sternly to keep walking and not to look back. Ikemefuna notices that Okonkwo has fallen to the back of the group and feels a cold fear, but is afraid to look back. Okonkwo doesn’t look when he hears the man who cleared his throat strike the first blow, but he hears Ikemefuna’s cry, “My father, they have killed me!” and he runs forward and strikes again blindly, afraid to be seen as weak. This is powerful and chilling writing.
Reading The Norton Anthology of English Literature 