Achebe writes of Umuofia in Things Fall Apart: "Among the Ibo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten." What does this Igbo detail show?

Things Fall Apart says of Okonkwo's father: "When Unoka died he had taken no title at all and he was heavily in debt." In Igbo Umuofia, what does this inheritance cost Okonkwo?

In Things Fall Apart: "His mother and sisters worked hard enough, but they grew women's crops, like coco-yams, beans and cassava. Yam, the king of crops, was a man's crop." What does this show about Igbo farming?

Okonkwo learns as a boy that "agbala was not only another name for a woman, it could also mean a man who had taken no title." What does this one Igbo word reveal about the clan?

At a kindred meeting in Umuofia, Okonkwo tells a man who has no titles, "This meeting is for men." The oldest man present rebukes Okonkwo for it. Which Igbo value does that rebuke defend?

At a trial in Things Fall Apart, one egwugwu says, "Uzowulu's body, I salute you," and Achebe adds that spirits always addressed humans as "bodies." Who are the egwugwu of Umuofia?

In Umuofia, Mgbafo's brothers take her home because Uzowulu beats her. The egwugwu order him to bring wine and beg her to return. What does the ruling show about Igbo marriage?

Uchendu asks his exiled nephew: "A man belongs to his fatherland and not to his motherland. And yet we say Nneka - Mother is Supreme." What does Uchendu say a mother's kin give a man?

In Things Fall Apart, Chielo is a widow and market trader, yet as priestess of Agbala she speaks for the Oracle and Okonkwo obeys her. What does this show about Igbo power?

Okonkwo beats a wife during the Week of Peace, and the priest Ezeani tells him: "The evil you have done can ruin the whole clan." Why is the beating treated as more than a family matter?

In the novel, "Nwoye had heard that twins were put in earthenware pots and thrown away in the forest, but he had never yet come across them." What does this Igbo custom finally cost his family?

In Things Fall Apart, Obierika hands the suitor's father thirty short broomsticks; the man's family whisper outside and return the bundle with fifteen. What is being settled?

Achebe explains the osu: "He could neither marry nor be married by the free-born... He could not take any of the four titles of the clan." What kind of position is that in Igbo Umuofia?

In Mbanta the elders give the missionaries a portion of the Evil Forest, and Uchendu says: "They boast about victory over death. Let us give them a real battlefield." Why do the elders offer that land?

Of the first converts in Umuofia: "None of his converts was a man whose word was heeded in the assembly of the people. None of them was a man of title." Why do the clan's leaders expect the new faith to fail?

Mr. Brown builds a school in Umuofia and argues that "the leaders of the land in the future would be men and women who had learned to read and write." What shift in power does his argument point to?

Obierika says of the missionary in Things Fall Apart: "He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart." What does Obierika name as the deepest damage to Umuofia?

The District Commissioner jails six leaders of Umuofia and tells them his court gives justice "just as it is done in my own country under a great queen." What does that court do to Igbo authority?

At the close of Things Fall Apart the District Commissioner plans a book, "The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger," in which Okonkwo will get one paragraph. What does this ending expose?

In the Igbo Umuofia of Things Fall Apart, a man who takes his own life offends the Earth, so only strangers may bury him.