Things fall apart by Chinua Achebe

"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.

But it was really not true that Okonkwo's palm-kernels had been cracked for him by a benevolent spirit.

He had cracked them himself.

Anyone who knew his grim struggle against poverty and misfortune could not say he had been lucky.

If ever a man deserved his success, that man was Okonkwo.

At an early age he had achieved fame as the greatest wrestler in all the land.

That was not luck.

At the most one could say that his chi or personal god was good.

But 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.