My father is so weak and lazy! I will never be like him!
Chapter 14
The earth goddess will make him pay!
Okonkwo's father, Unoka, was infamous throughout Umuofia for his poor and disgraceful life in the clan. The narrator tells the reader that he was an ill-fated man. He had a bad chi or personal god, and evil fortune followed him to . . . his death, for he had no grave. [Unoka] died . . . an abomination to the earth goddess (18). The Umuofians believed that he was a disgrace to the earth goddess, so they left him to die without a care.
Okonkwo has struggled from a very young age due to his father's lack of parental authority and power. When the narrator is describing Okonkwo's struggle, they mention that the Ibo people have a proverb that when a man says yes his chi says yes also. Okonkwo said yes very strongly; so his chi agreed (27). Okonkwo fought many grueling battles, but managed to succeed in a world where nearly all odds were against him, all because he made the effort to control his destiny; his fate.
In Chapter 13, while celebrating the life of Ogbuefi Ezeudu, all the men fire their guns to make noise for him. By complete chance though, Okonkwo's gun explodes, sending metal shrapnels all over, with one of these piercing the heart of one of Ezeudu's young boys. The narrator explains that it was a crime against the earth goddess to kill a clansman, and [that] a man who committed it must flee from the land (124). The reader can see that Umuofian law has no separation between church and state. Rather than seeing this as a crime against humanity, the Igbo people see murder of a clansman as a crime against the gods.