- All's Well That Ends Well
- Antony and Cleopatra
- As You Like It
- The Comedy of Errors
- Coriolanus
- Cymbeline
- Hamlet
- Henry IV, Part 1
- Henry IV, Part 2
- Henry V
- Henry VI, Part 1
- Henry VI, Part 2
- Henry VI, Part 3
- Henry VIII
- Julius Caesar
- King John
- King Lear
- Love's Labor's Lost
- A Lover's Complaint
- Macbeth
- Measure for Measure
- The Merchant of Venice
- The Merry Wives of Windsor
- A Midsummer Night's Dream
- Much Ado About Nothing
- Othello
- Pericles
- The Rape of Lucrece
- Richard II
- Richard III
- Romeo and Juliet
- Shakespeare's Sonnets
- The Taming of the Shrew
- The Tempest
- Timon of Athens
- Titus Andronicus
- Troilus and Cressida
- Twelfth Night
- The Two Gentlemen of Verona
- Venus and Adonis
- The Winter's Tale
When the District Commissioner speaks to Obierika about Okonkwo’s hiding location, he becomes frustrated at the clan’s ways of eluding direct questions. This annoyance leads to a general criticism on their love of proverbs.
Achebe encapsulates here the deep sense of cultural misunderstanding that has emerged between the white men and Ibo people. Describing proverbs as “superfluous words” entirely misses the series of complex social ceremonies that center around language—and reduces these practices to a set of unnecessary delays. To call into question the very nature of communication is to radically misunderstand the Ibo.
This preference for actions over words…