Answers to the Questions in the story "Marriage is a Private Affair" by Chinua Achebe

Making Meanings

~Marriage is a Private Affair

First Thoughts

1. What are some similarities and differences between your generation’s attitudes toward love and marriage and those of the generation before you. How would you compare the attitudes you have written down with the attitudes between generations in this story? 

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Shaping Interpretations 
2. What is the irony of the story’s title? 
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3. This story bursts with conflicts among people and ideas. What are at least two of these conflicts? Does the story resolve them? If so, how? 
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4. How would you describe Okeke’s character? Use details from the story to support your answer. 
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5. What do you think happened to the herbalist, and why would Achebe include that anecdote? 
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6. What might the rain at the end of the story symbolize? 
     ~ The rain symbolizes grief and longing for Okeke had been buildoing a wall between him and Nnaemeka and his family. When the time that Okeke had knew that he had two grandsons he can't help but think of them. That night then, he hardly slept and his fear crept that he might die without making it up to them.

7. The story’s subject is a marriage that occurs against a parent’s wishes, but what is the story’s theme? 
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8. Both Achebe’s story and the poem “Going Home” (see Connections) are about generational and cultural conflict, but they differ in narrative point of view. From whose point of view is each told? How does the point of view shape your response to each work?
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Extending the Text 
9. You hear much talk today about “traditional values” and about the “multicultural society.” What are some contemporary examples of clashes in values, and how would you relate them to this story’s plot and theme?
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