"Why can't you take him down yourselves? he asked. It is against our custom, said one of the men. It is an abomination for a man to take his own life. It is an offense against the Earth, and a man who commits it will not be buried by his clansmen. His body is evil, and only strangers may touch it. That is why we ask your people to bring him down, because you are strangers. Will you bury him like any other man? asked the Commissioner. We cannot bury him. Only strangers can. We shall pay your men to do it. When he has been buried we will then do our duty by him. We shall make sacrifices to cleanse the desecrated land" (Achebe 207-208).
In this part of the book the Commissioner has come to the village of Umuofia for Okonkwo but it was too late because Okonkwo has killed himself. The villagers had known that Okonkwo was dead for a while but had not cut him down from the tree he had hung himself on when the Commissioner had arrived. The Commissioner and his followers found it odd that the villagers had not done anything to get him down and give him a proper burial and this was because to the village's culture Okonkwo has committed a sin to the Earth by committing suicide. This traditional culture in Umuofia where they will not touch the dead body of a person who has committed a sin in their culture would be challenged by an imperialist country because in an imperialist country whether a person who died had killed themselves or not or does not die from natural causes they would be given a proper burial with their loved ones and other people from that place would touch the body.
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