Description
Question and story below. Any questions or concerns regarding the assignment ask.
One of the issues explored in this story is the relationship between fathers and sons. What, specifically, do you think is being said about that relationship?
Find at least one quotation from the story that helps to support your answer and use proper MLA to cite it.
Title:
Marriage Is a Private Affair
Short story, 1973
Author(s):
Chinua Achebe
Nigerian Writer ( 1930 - 2013 )
Other Names Used:
Achebe, Albert Chinualum
ogu; Chinualumogu, Albert;
Source:
Girls at War and Other Stories
. Chinua Achebe. New York: Fawcett Premier, 1973.
p22.
Document Type:
Short story
Text:
“Have you written to your dad yet?” asked Nene1
one afternoon as she sat with Nnaemeka in her
room at 16 Kasanga Street, Lagos.
“ No. I’ve been thinking about it. I think it’s
better to tell him when I get home on leave!”
“But why? Your leave is such a long way off
yet—six whole weeks. He should be let into our
happiness now.”
Nnaemeka was silent for a while, and then began ve
ry slowly as if he groped for his words: “I
wish I were sure it would be happiness to him.”
“Of course it must,” replied Nene, a
little surprised. “W
hy shouldn’t it?”
“You have lived in Lagos all your life, and you know
very little about people in remote parts of
the country.”
“That’s what you always say. But I don’t believe
anybody will be so unlik
e other people that
they will be unhappy when their
sons are engaged to marry.”
“Yes. They are most unhappy if the engagement
is not arranged by them. In our case it’s
worse—you are not even an Ibo.”
This was said so seriously and so bluntly that
Nene could not find speech immediately. In the
cosmopolitan atmosphere of the city it had always seemed to her something of a joke that a
person’s tribe coul
d determine whom he married.
At last she said, “You don’t really mean that he
will object to your marrying me simply on that
account? I had always thought you Ibos were
kindly disposed to other people.”
“So we are. But when it comes to marriage, well,
it’s not quite so simple. And this,” he added,
“is not peculiar to the
Ibos. If your father were
alive and lived in the
heart of Ibibio-land he
would be exactly like my father.”
“I don’t know. But anyway, as your father is
so fond of you, I’m sure he will forgive you soon
enough. Come on then, be a good boy and send him a nice lovely letter . . .”
“It would not be wise to break
the news to him by writing. A le
tter will bring it upon him with a
shock. I’m quite sure about that.”
“All right, honey, suit yourself
. You know your father.”
As Nnaemeka walked home that evening he
turned over in his mind different ways of
overcoming his father’s opposition, especially now th
at he had gone and found a girl for him. He
had thought of showing his letter
to Nene but decided on second t
houghts not to, at least for the
moment. He read it again when he got hom
e and couldn’t help smiling to himself. He
remembered Ugoye quite well, an Amazon of a gi
rl who used to beat up all the boys, himself
included, on the way to the stream
, a complete dunce at school.
I have found a girl who will suit you admirabl
y—Ugoye Nweke, the eldest daughter of our
neighbor, Jacob Nweke. She has a proper Christian upbringing. When she stopped schooling
some years ago her father (a man of sound judgme
nt) sent her to live in the house of a pastor
where she has received all the training a wife
could need. Her Sunday school teacher has told
me that she reads her Bible ver
y fluently. I hope we shall begi
n negotiations when you come
home in December.
On the second evening of his re
turn from Lagos, Nnaemeka sat
with his father under a cassia
tree. This was the old man’s retreat where he went
to read his Bible when the parching December
sun had set and a fresh, revivi
ng wind blew on the leaves.
“Father,” began Nnaemeka suddenly, “I
have come to ask for forgiveness.”
“Forgiveness? For what, my s
on?” he asked in amazement.
“It’s about this marriage question.”
“Which marriage question?”
“I can’t—we must—I mean it is impossibl
e for me to marry Nweke’s daughter.”
“Impossible? Why?” asked his father.
“I don’t love her.”
“Nobody said you did. Why should you?” he asked.
“Marriage today is different . . .”
“Look here, my son,” interrupted hi
s father, “nothing is different.
What one looks for in a wife
are a good character and a Christian background.”
Nnaemeka saw there was no hope along the present line of argument.
“Moreover,” he said, “I am engaged to marry a
nother girl who has all of
Ugoye’s good qualities,
and who . . .”
His father did not believe his ears. “What did
you say?” he asked slowly
and disconcertingly.
“She is a good Christian,” his son went on, “and
a teacher in a girls’ school in Lagos.”
“Teacher, did you say? If you consider that a qualif
ication for a good wife I should like to point
out to you, Emeka, that no Christian woman should te
ach. St. Paul in his lett
er to the Corinthians
says that women should keep silence.” He rose
slowly from his seat and paced forward and
backward. This was his pet subject, and he c
ondemned vehemently those church leaders who
encouraged women to teach in their schools. Afte
r he had spent his emotion on a long homily he
at last came back to his son’s enga
gement, in a seemingly milder tone.
“Whose daughter is she, anyway?”
“She is Nene Atang.”
“What!” All the mildness was gone again. “Did y
ou say Neneataga, what does that mean?”
“Nene Atang from Calabar. She is the only girl
I can marry.” This was a very rash reply and
Nnaemeka expected the storm to burst. But it di
d not. His father merely walked away into his
room. This was most unexpected
and perplexed Nnaemeka. His father’s silence was infinitely
more menacing than a flood of threatening spe
ech. That night the old man did not eat.
When he sent for Nnaemeka a day later he app
lied all possible ways of dissuasion. But the young
man’s heart was hardened, and his father
eventually gave him up as lost.
“I owe it to you, my son, as a dut
y to show you what is right
and what is wrong. Whoever put
this idea into your head might as
well have cut your throat. It is Satan’s work.” He waved his son
away.
“You will change your mind, Father, when you know Nene.”
“I shall never see her,” was the reply. From that
night the father scarcely spoke to his son. He did
not, however, cease hoping that he w
ould realize how serious was the
danger he was heading for.
Day and night he put h
im in his prayers.
Nnaemeka, for his own part, was very deeply aff
ected by his father’s grief. But he kept hoping
that it would pass away. If it had occurred to him
that never in the history of his people had a
man married a woman who spoke a
different tongue, he might have been less optimistic. “It has
never been heard,” was the verdict of an old
man speaking a few weeks later. In that short
sentence he spoke for all of his people. This
man had come with others to commiserate with
Okeke when news went round about his son’s beha
vior. By that time the son had gone back to
Lagos.
“It has never been heard,” said the old man again with a sad shake of his head.
“What did Our Lord say?” asked another gentleman.
“Sons shall rise against their Fathers; it is
there in the Holy Book.”
“It is the beginning of th
e end,” said another.
The discussion thus tending to become theo
logical, Madubogwu, a highl
y practical man, brought
it down once more to th
e ordinary level.
“Have you thought of consulting a
native doctor about your son?” he asked Nnaemeka’s father.
“He isn’t sick,” was the reply.
“What is he then? The boy’s mind is diseased
and only a good herbalist can bring him back to
his right senses. The medicine he requires is
Amalile
, the same that women apply with success to
recapture their husbands’ straying affection.”
“Madubogwu is right,” said another gentle
man. “This thing calls for medicine.”
“I shall not call in a native doc
tor.” Nnaemeka’s father was known
to be obstinately ahead of his
more superstitious neighbors in these matters.
“I will not be another Mrs. Ochuba. If my son
wants to kill himself let him do it with his ow
n hands. It is not for me to help him.”
“But it was her fault,” said Ma
dubogwu. “She ought to have gone to
an honest herbalist. She was
a clever woman, nevertheless.”
“She was a wicked murderess,” said Jonathan, w
ho rarely argued with his neighbors because, he
often said, they were incapable of reasoning. “T
he medicine was prepared for her husband, it was
his name they called in its preparation, and I am su
re it would have been
perfectly beneficial to
him. It was wicked to put it into the herbal
ist’s food, and say you were
only trying it out.”
Six months later, Nnaemeka was showing his
young wife a short letter from his father:
It amazes me that you could be so unfeeling
as to send me your wedding picture. I would have
sent it back. But on further t
hought I decided just to cut off
your wife and se
nd it back to you
because I have nothing to do with her. How I wi
sh that I had nothing to do with you either.
When Nene read through this letter and looked at
the mutilated picture her ey
es filled with tears,
and she began to sob.
“Don’t cry, my darling,” said her husband. “He
is essentially good-natured and will one day look
more kindly on our marriage.”
But years passed and that one day did not come.
For eight years, Okeke would have nothing to
do with his son, Nnaemeka. Only three times
(when Nnaemeka asked to come home and sp
end his leave) did he
write to him.
“I can’t have you in my house,” he replied on one
occasion. “It can be of no
interest to me where
or how you spend your leave—or yo
ur life, for that matter.”
The prejudice against Nnaemeka’s marriage was not
confined to his little village. In Lagos,
especially among his people who worked there, it
showed itself in a different way. Their women,
when they met at their village meeting, were no
t hostile to Nene. Rather, they paid her such
excessive deference as to make her feel she wa
s not one of them. But as time went on, Nene
gradually broke through some of this prejudi
ce and even began to make friends among them.
Slowly and grudgingly they began to admit that
she kept her home much
better than most of
them.
The story eventually got to the lit
tle village in the hear
t of the Ibo country that Nnaemeka and his
young wife were a most happy couple. But his fath
er was one of the few people in the village
who knew nothing about this. He always displaye
d so much temper whenever his son’s name
was mentioned that everyone avoided it in his pr
esence. By a tremendous effort of will he had
succeeded in pushing his son to the back of his mi
nd. The strain had nearly killed him but he had
persevered, and won.
Then one day he received a letter from Nene, a
nd in spite of himself he began to glance through
it perfunctorily until all
of a sudden the expression on his f
ace changed and he began to read
more carefully.
. . . Our two sons, from the day they learnt that
they have a grandfather, have insisted on being
taken to him. I find it impossible
to tell them that you will not se
e them. I implore you to allow
Nnaemeka to bring them home for a short time dur
ing his leave next mont
h. I shall remain here
in Lagos . . .
The old man at once felt the resolution he
had built up over so many years falling in. He was
telling himself that he must not gi
ve in. He tried to steel his heart
against all emotional appeals. It
was a reenactment of that other struggle. He
leaned against a window
and looked out. The sky
was overcast with heavy black clouds and a high
wind began to blow, filling the air with dust
and dry leaves. It was one of t
hose rare occasions when even Nature takes a hand in a human
fight. Very soon it began to rain, the first rain in
the year. It came down in large sharp drops and
was accompanied by the lightning and thunder which mark a change of season. Okeke was trying
hard not to think of his two grandsons. But he
knew he was now fighting a losing battle. He tried
to hum a favorite hymn but the pattering of larg
e raindrops on the roof broke up the tune. His
mind immediately returned to the children. Ho
w could he shut his door
against them? By a
curious mental process he imagined them standing, sad and forsaken, under the harsh angry
weather—shut out from his house.
That night he hardly slept, from remorse—and
a vague fear that he mi
ght die without making it
up to them.
Explanation & Answer
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Surname 1
Name:
Professor:
Date:
Father – Son Relationship
The story, Marriage is a Private Affair, by Chinua Achebe is dominated by a theme of
relationships. The relationships explored in the story notwithstanding are: between Nnaemeka and
his fiancé who later becomes his wife, between Nene and the community which is majorly made...