The book's final confrontation between the District Commissioner and the Umuofians is almost anticlimactic. It serves to demonstrate once more the deep cultural gulf between the Europeans and the Igbos. This difference is dramatized not solely by the events but also by the language of the chapter. For example, notice the sudden appearance of several literate words relating to the Commissioner throughout the scene: infuriating, superfluous, instantaneously, resolute. He imagines himself to be a "student of primitive customs," listening to the explanation of the "primitive belief" about handling the body of a suicide. His warning about the natives playing "monkey tricks" may reflect his views that they are, in fact, animalistic — perhaps like primates in the wild.
In preparation for the final paragraph of the novel, Achebe dramatically shifts the narrative style from an omniscient, mostly objective point of view to the personal point of view of the District Commissioner, whose thoughts in the final paragraph become the final irony of the book. The Commissioner sees himself as a benevolent ambassador to the natives — one who must maintain his dignity at all times in order to earn the favorable opinion of the natives. He prides himself on having spent many years toiling to bring "civilization to different parts of Africa," and he has "learned a number of things." The Commissioner feels that his experiences allow him the privilege of writing the definitive book on The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
Primitive is, of course, his British point of view. The Commissioner, like other colonialists, cannot imagine that he understands very little about the Igbo, especially that they are not primitive — except perhaps from a European technological perspective. In the meantime, the novel has revealed to its readers the complex system of justice, government, society, economy, religion, and even medicine in Umuofia before the British arrived.
Finally, the Commissioner seems unconcerned about the ironic fact that the colonialists' methods of pacification are often achieved through suppression and violence — themselves essentially primitive means for achieving nationalistic objectives.
