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"Since I survived that year," he always said, "I shall survive anything." He put it down to his inflexible will.
His father, Unoka, who was then an ailing man, had said to him during that terrible harvest month: "Do not despair. 1 know you will not despair. You have a manly and a proud heart. A proud heart can survive a general failure because such
,, failure does not prick its pride. It is more difficult and more hitter when a man fails alone ."
Unoka was like that in his last days. His love of talk had grown with age and sickness. It tried Okonkwo's patience yond words.
CHAPTER FOUR
"Looking at a king's mouth," said an old man, "one would think he never sucked at his mother's breast." He was talking about Okonkwo, who had risen so suddenly from great poverty and misfortune to be one of the lords of the clan. The old man bore no ill will towards Okonkwo. Indeed he respected him for his industry and success. But he was struck, as most people were, by Okonkwo's brusqueness in dealing with less successful men. Only a week ago a man had contradicted him at a kindred meeting which they held to discuss the next ancestral feast. Without looking at the man Okonkwo had said: "This meeting is for men." The man who had contradicted him had no titles. That was why he had called him a woman. Okonkwo knew how to kill a man's spirit.
Everybody at the kindred meeting took sides with Osugo when Okonkwo called him a woman. The oldest man present said sternly that those whose palm-kernels were cracked for them by a benevolent spirit should not forget to be humble. Okonkwo said he was sorry for what he had said, and the meeting continued.