Chapter Twenty-Five Summary

The district commissioner, with an army of soldiers, turned up at Okonkwo’s house and demanded his presence. However, Okonkwo was not there—only some of his friends who looked weary and sad.

Obierike led the district commissioner and his men to a bush behind Okonkwo’s compound where they found the latter’s body hanging from a tree.

Obierika requested that the soldiers help them bring the body down and bury it. The district commissioner became curious, asking why the men could not do it themselves. Obierika explained that committing suicide was considered a terrible, unforgiveable sin and the body could only be touched by strangers. He then lashed out at the white man, accusing him of driving one of Umuofia’s greatest men to suicide and an ignominious burial.

As the district commissioner walked away, he thought of the book he would write on the pacification of the primitive tribes of Nigeria and decided to include a paragraph about the man who killed a court messenger and then hanged himself.

Chapter Twenty-Five Analysis

It is a deeply sad end to the book and to the life of a great tribesman. Ironically, the white man considers writing a book about bringing a whole continent to its knees and calls it “pacification.”