Spot The Bible Story

It's fun spotting Bible stories in literature and art. There were Abraham and Isaac, right below my nose, as I recently reread Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart (1958). The main character, Okonkwo, "well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond" for his strength and fearlessness, faces a challenge of biblical proportions when the Oracle of the Hills and the Caves decrees that Ikemefuna, Okonkwo's adopted son, must die. However, unlike the Abraham story, the village elder, who passes the message on to Okonkwo, forbids that he take action. He says: "Do not bear a hand in his death."

Instead, a group of village elders plan to seize the boy, take him to the outskirts of town, and perform the sacrifice. Okonkwo accompanies the group on the mission. The boy does not know what the trip is for, and wonders if he is being taken back to his native village. Then the terrible moment: "As a man who had cleared his throat drew up and raised his matchet, Okonkwo looked away. He heard the blow. The pot fell and broke in the sand. He heard Ikemefuna cry, 'My father, they have killed me!' as he ran towards him. Dazed with fear, Okonkwo drew his matchet and cut him down. He was afraid of being thought weak." In the end, it is Okonkwo that takes Ikemefuna's life.

What is Okonkwo afraid of? His gods, his people, a wounded son or his wounded pride?

On the level of narration, the sacrifice of Ikemefuna in Things Fall Apart brings to mind Erich Auerbach's comparison of narration in The Bible and The Odyssey. As in most literature that comes after these two texts, the sacrifice of Ikemefuna in Things Fall Apart combines both an elusive narration and the patent tell-all, foreground-friendly nature of the Homeric narrative. As the men walk through the forest, we are privy to Ikemefuna's thoughts along the way: "Although he had felt uneasy at first, he was not afraid now. Okonkwo walked behind him. He could hardly imagine that Okonkwo was not his real father..." Later, at the moment of sacrifice, the narrator tells us that Okonkwo is afraid (see above quotation.) However, the narration is maddeningly, beautifully elusive, too. There are no clear answers. As in the Abraham episode, the reader wonders, "How could Okonkwo do that? What was he thinking?" Okonkwo's action is beyond comprehension, and yet, it is of a slightly less mechanical nature than Abraham's, because the narrator makes it clear to us that it is fraught with woe all around.

Poor Ikemefuna. His legacy is strong, however, not unlike that of martyrs or youth gone too young. I was just watching a film called "Ezra" about a former child soldier in Sierra Leone who recalls the war in a so-called "Truth and Reconciliation" forum. In one scene, probably my favorite of the film, Ezra and three other soldiers are relaxing before a night mission in which they will have to raze a village. They discuss Things Fall Apart, and Ikemefuna, and one of the soldiers says, "We are like Ikemefuna," children sacrificed for no apparent reason. And so Isaac becomes Ikemefuna, becomes Ezra, Mariam, and Moses, becomes a baby left in the back of a livery cab, innocence cut down, these sacrificial lambs.

Anyone got another Bible story embedded in something they're reading?