The story “Departure” describes a character leaving home, and the passage from “Up to Coolly” describes a character returning home. Write an short response that analyzes how the narrators relate the events about journeys in a manner that builds mystery and/or tension. Be sure to use support from both texts in developing your response.

Based on the traditions of their agricultural society, the Igbo do not bury people who die from the swelling disease, leprosy, because it would be an abomination to the earth goddess.

Explanation:

Things Fall Apart (1958) is a book written by Chinua Achebe. It tells a story about life in south-eastern Nigeria and the arrival of the Europeans at the end of the 19th century.

The society in the novel worships the Earth Goddess, and people are afraid that burying the dead that suffered from leprosy or similar disease would be considered as an abomination to the Goddess. Okonkwo remembers that, when his father died from swelling of the limbs, he could not be buried in the earth, and was thus left in the Evil Forest to rot.

The Evil Forest is, therefore, a symbol of the cultural norms of the Igbo culture. In Chapter 17, the forest is described as a place 'where the clan buried all those who died of the really evil diseases, like leprosy and smallpox.'