55 pages • 1 hour read
Chinelo OkparantaUnder the Udala Trees
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2015A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaPart 6, Chapters 63-72
Part 6
Chapter 63 Summary
Family and friends celebrate the birth of Chidinma, Ijeoma and Chibundu’s healthy daughter. However, Chibundu refuses to buy a goat to kill for a feast. Adaora notices the tension between husband and wife. While breastfeeding, Ijeoma reflects on her daughter’s name, a variant of Chibundu’s name that means “God is good” (264).
Chapter 64 Summary
Chibundu’s mother and Ijeoma’s mother stay with them to help with the baby for a couple months. Adaora helps with breastfeeding and the pain that this causes in Ijeoma’s body.
Chapter 65 Summary
Chapter 66 Summary
After several months, Ijeoma and Chidinma become inseparable. The December masquerades fill the streets with ojuju dancers. Adaora joins Ijeoma in Port Harcourt for the Christmas season. They reminisce about Uzo taking them on trips to Port Harcourt.
Ijeoma agrees to visit Father Christmas in Kingsway, where they ride a little Christmas train and buy presents. Chibundu seems more cheerful during this excursion but quickly sinks back into “pouting” (269).
Chapter 67 Summary
When Chidinma is around eight months old, there is a harmattan, a dry and dusty northeasterly trade wind. While Chibundu sharpens his machete and trims the hedges, Ijeoma walks around trying to calm the fussy baby.
She hears a vague, knuckle-cracking sound. When she walks back towards the door, she realizes it’s knocking: Chibundu bursts through the door with his machete. He is angry that she didn’t hear him ask for water.
After Ijeoma apologizes, Chibundu says he wants a son. Ijeoma doesn’t feel physically ready yet. He says “You owe me that much” (273), and pushes his machete blade against her leg. Before he breaks the skin, Ijeoma yells at him and he retreats out the door. That night in bed, he demands they try to conceive again.
Chapter 68 Summary
Chapter 69 Summary
She finds Chibundu in the bedroom; he’s found her unsent letters to Ndidi. Ijeoma apologizes. Chibundu grabs her cheeks forcefully and reads her letters aloud. Ijeoma volunteers to throw them out, and he watches her rip up a letter. He then reveals that’s he’s been stealing letter from Ndidi to Ijeoma from the post office. He reads some of those letters aloud.
Ijeoma admits that she sent three letters, but stopped because she thought Ndidi wasn’t writing back. Chibundu threatens her, saying he can make her “pay the price” because she is “his wife” (283).
Chapter 70 Summary
The next morning, Chibundu seems chipper and apologizes. He claims that Ijeoma’s lesbianism doesn’t bother him, since he is areligious, but he feels that he has a right to Ijeoma because he knew her first. Chibundu believes that they can make their marriage work if Ijeoma tries harder and gives him a son.
Ijeoma goes to a shop after Chibundu leaves for work and the shop girl’s smile offers some consolation. Back home, Ijeoma falls asleep on the sofa and wakes to find Chidinma putting a pincushion in her mouth. Chibundu finds Chidinma and removes the pincushion.
Chapter 71 Summary
Chapter 72 Summary
Chapters 63-72 Analysis
Images and symbols from earlier in the novel recur in this section with ironic, distancing, and tragic effect.
Ijeoma compared female beauty to an ojuju mask in Chapter 42, an image that evoked her mother’s insistence that Ijeoma seek out male attention. Now, in Chapter 66, a December masquerade brings out ojuju dancers, some of whom are actually robbers, demanding the people pay to cross their path. The masked revelers who are actually dangerous criminals echo Ijeoma’s experience of wearing a mask of heterosexuality in her marriage to Chibundu in order to remain safe.
Just as Ijeoma tried to woo Amina through a love letter, she also spills out her love for Ndidi through sent and unsent letters, writing “He is my husband, yes, but you are the one I love” (278). Although she doesn’t realize it, in this case, her love is requited. Ndidi replies to one of the letters Ijeoma does send with: “Not a day goes by that I don’t think of you” (282). However, these letters are just as tragic as her earlier note to Amina: Chibundu has been intercepting Ndidi’s letters, and when he finds Ijeoma’s secret unsent stash, he shames her by reading them aloud and making her tear them up.
Ijeoma’s lesbianism often comes out through her appreciation for the beautiful women around her. Just as she paid attention to Nnenna, the shop girl in the Aba market, so too she now finds solace in Anuli, the shop girl in Port Harcourt (287). Both girls lift Ijeoma’s spirits.
Several of the repeating echoes have to do with Ijeoma’s marriage. Chibundu reveals his new car “as if he were a character from one of those books that Amina used to read” (291), an explicit reference to the earlier mention of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. Later, Ijeoma recalls Adaora’s comparison between a married couple and a bicycle from Chapter 43. Now, she rejects this comparison in favor of a more pleasing image: A single person can operate like a sewing machine (288).
The most emotional reiteration of an object is the naira bills. In Chapter 55, Chibundu’s groomsmen threw them as a shower of good wishes when Ijeoma danced in jigida beads at her wedding. In Chapter 72, Chibundu throws them at Ijeoma to debase her because she doesn’t desire him. Both occurrences speak to the transactional nature of Ijeoma’s marriage.
