Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary
devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Chi
The concept of chi is discussed at various
points throughout the novel and is important to our understanding
of Okonkwo as a tragic hero. The chi is an individual’s
personal god, whose merit is determined by the individual’s good
fortune or lack thereof. Along the lines of this interpretation,
one can explain Okonkwo’s tragic fate as the result of a problematic chi—a
thought that occurs to Okonkwo at several points in the novel. For
the clan believes, as the narrator tells us in Chapter 14,
a “man could not rise beyond the destiny of his chi.”
But there is another understanding of chi that conflicts
with this definition. In Chapter 4, the narrator relates, according
to an Igbo proverb, that “when a man says yes his chi says yes
also.” According to this understanding, individuals will their own
destinies. Thus, depending upon our interpretation of chi, Okonkwo
seems either more or less responsible for his own tragic death.
Okonkwo himself shifts between these poles: when things are going
well for him, he perceives himself as master and maker of his own
destiny; when things go badly, however, he automatically disavows
responsibility and asks why he should be so ill-fated.
Animal Imagery
In their descriptions, categorizations, and explanations
of human behavior and wisdom, the Igbo often use animal anecdotes
to naturalize their rituals and beliefs. The presence of animals
in their folklore reflects the environment in which they live—not
yet “modernized” by European influence. Though the colonizers, for the
most part, view the Igbo’s understanding of the world as rudimentary,
the Igbo perceive these animal stories, such as the account of how
the tortoise’s shell came to be bumpy, as logical explanations of
natural phenomena. Another important animal image is the figure
of the sacred python. Enoch’s alleged killing and eating of the python
symbolizes the transition to a new form of spirituality and a new
religious order. Enoch’s disrespect of the python clashes with the
Igbo’s reverence for it, epitomizing the incompatibility of colonialist
and indigenous values.
