The Schoolteacher Character Analysis

Notorious among the village schoolchildren for beating students with his cane, the schoolteacher provides Chike and his peers with their first introduction to the English language. For younger students, the schoolteacher instructs songs about the catechism and Western history—one that is particularly memorable to Chike is about Julius Caesar being the ruler of the world. The schoolteacher is stricter with the older students, using English words to tease and scold them for being late or lazy. He also begins to introduce longer, more complicated English words. Chike notes “periwinkle,” “procrastination,” and, in the context of a lesson about seed dispersal, the phrase “explosive mechanism.”