[In] Things Fall Apart the society is forced to give way to an inevitable change because of its violent collision with an alien institution. In Arrow of God, however, we have a more explosive situation of a society cleaving apart largely from its own internal strain. The latter novel illustrates the classic situation of a house divided against itself which, with or without any assistance from an external force, must collapse. To be sure the destructive colonial forces that we encounter in the first novel are still very much alive and thriving, but they now stand on the periphery of the doomed society, waiting on the wing to swoop down, like vultures, the moment the society commits harakiri. In this particular sense Arrow of God is more truly the tragedy…. (p. 283)

[The] central irony in [Things Fall Apart is the] paradox between what the society seems to encourage...