Arrow of God

Ezeulu is the High Priest of Ulu, the leading deity of Umuaro. Although even his close friend Akuebue criticizes Ezeulu for being “a proud man and the most stubborn person you know is only his messenger” (212), he works each day to lead his village effectively. Across Arrow of God, the elders of Umuaro worry that Ezeulu is too close with the white administrators who work to control the local populations in Umuaro and Okperi. Ezeulu admires Wintabota, who broke the guns of his people and ended the fighting between the tribes, and he sends his son, Oduche, to learn about white men.

Ezeulu recognizes that “what rile[s] his enemies” is the fact “that the white man whose father or mother no one know should come to tell them the truth they knew but hated to hear” (6). He knows that “the dead fathers of Umuaro looking at the world from Ani-Mmo must be utterly bewildered by the ways of the new age” (14), but Ezeulu seeks a way to stay true to tradition. At times, he stubbornly recognizes the need for flexibility in an age where new gods and new people upset the order of the past. By the end of the story, Ezeulu’s decisions pull his people into famine and, in ways he could not foresee, under the control of white men’s gods.