What are the folktales in Things Fall Apart?

Answer 1

One of the folk tales Achebe divulges in Things Fall Apart is a tale which explains why turtles have bumpy shells. It goes into a story where he was a very greedy man, who wanted to be in the sky with the birds. They didn't trust him at first, but eventually they all gave him a feather to get up there. He was the spokes person, so he said he was going to eat first. Eventually everyone was mad at him and took their feathers back. He asked one of them to tell his wife to put all the soft things out side of his house, so that he could jump down in safety. However, the bird told his wife to put all the hard things out. As the turtle jumped out of the sky, he fell upon the hard object and broke his shell. Eventually it healed, but was extremely bumpy because of the cracks in it.