SOURCE: “Theoretical Construction and Constructive Theorizing on the Execution of Ikemefuna in Achebe's Things Fall Apart: A Study in Critical Dualism,” in Research in African Literatures, Vol. 31, No. 2, Summer, 2000, pp. 163–73.

In the following essay, Nwabueze analyzes the episode in Things Fall Apart in which the character Okonkwo participates in the killing of Ikemefuna and asserts that this episode has been misinterpreted by many critics.

Wherever Something Stands, Something Else stands beside it. 

—Igbo Proverb

The use of proverbial lore is a prominent conversational feature in the Igboland of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. So important is the use of proverbs in Igbo conversation and orature that Achebe describes it as “the palm oil with which words are eaten” (5). The proverb quoted above is concerned with the concept of duality in interpretative reasoning and can be seen as a philosophical pedestal on which Achebe's Things Fall Apart stands. It...