Chapters 1-2 Summary

Obi Okonkwo is prepared for Justice William Galloway's sentence in his trial before the High Court of Lagos and the Southern Cameroons, but feels tears in his eyes as the lecture comes: how could someone of his education and promise fall so far? The courtroom is packed with spectators, who have followed the case. On the morning of the verdict, Obi's workaholic boss, Mr. Green, plays tennis with a friend from the British Council and later in the club bar—theoretically desegregated, but in fact a European enclave — declares that Africans are thoroughly corrupt, sapped mentally and physically by the climate, disease, and given a Western education that they do not know how to use. That same morning, the Umuofia Progressive Union (Lagos Branch) meets again to discuss Obi's lost case. Earlier, some members oppose hiring a lawyer for...