I am currently reading Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, consider the following passage.
The colonizers just came to the tribe of Mbanta and everyone seemed uninterested...
But there was a young lad who had been captivated. His name was Nwoye, Okonkwo’s first son. It was not the mad logic of the Trinity that captivated him. He did not understand it. It was the poetry of the new religion, something felt in the marrow. The hymn about brothers who sat in darkness and in fear seemed to answer a vague and persistent question that haunted his young soul—the question of the twins crying in the bush and the question of Ikemefuna who was killed. He felt a relief within as the hymn poured into his parched soul. The words of the hymn were like the drops of frozen rain melting on the dry palate of the panting earth. Nwoye’s callow mind was greatly puzzled.
Focus on the second last quote
The words of the hymn were like the drops of frozen rain melting on the dry palate of the panting earth.
I guessed that the palate refers to nwoye's soul but I am unable to point out any adjectives that describe why achebe specifically used the frozen rain to represent the hymn and the dry palate to his soul, can someone help me out here?
