Achebe-No Longer At Ease
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Chinua Achebe’s novels deal with the psychic and community fragmentation that occurs within native cultures that become victim to English imperialism. In No Longer At Ease, our protagonist, Obi Okonkwo, is the grandson of Umuofia Okonkwo, the protagonist of Things Fall Apart who brings shame to his community by committing suicide. Obi, too, will bring shame to his community but in different ways. He will do so because his Nigerian community views him as having exchanged his native identity and values for those of the oppressive and destroying English. However, Obi, in reality, is an island. No longer a member of his native community because of the educational and values gulf his English education creates between him and his people, but also because he is also not fully English. Obi is ostracized and isolated from both his people and the new English social order. In trying to forge a new identity based on the old world and the new world, Obi is torn apart in the process. His former community views him as someone who has turned his back on their very way of being. We see this when he is perceived as not sending home enough money to give his mother the burial the mother of a son who has achieved a European post deserves “ ‘It was a thing of shame,’ he said. Someone else wanted to know, by the way, why the beast has not obtained permission to go home. ‘That is what Lagos can do to a young man. He runs after sweet things, dances br
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ltural fence. Instead, he is also rejected, ostracized and treated as an inferior by the English. We see many examples of this, like when his supervisor complains to him about the laziness inherent in the Nigerian way of work “It’s people like you who ought to make the Government decide. That is what I have always said. There is no single Nigerian who is prepared to forgo a little privilege in the interests of his country. From your ministers down to your most junior clerk. And you tell me you want to govern yourselves” (Achebe 144).
Thus, Obi’s dualistic cultural training, education, and perspective make him an island who finds little solace or refuge in the midst of the turbulent seas of culture clash. This dualistic perspective manifests itself as a loss of self-worth and power of the soul within Obi. Knowing his actions will fully please neither his fellow Nigerians or his English employers, he becomes paralyzed. He loses his ability to act based on a fully formed value system, because his own has been torn asunder by the polar extremes of two cultures, two cultures which he cannot reconcile externally or internally. We see this paralysis when he is faced with the decision of taking bribes, even though most Englishm
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Nigerians English, Obika Iweka—all, English Obi, Unfortunately Obi, Isaac Obis, Nigerian English, Fall Apart, Chinua Achebes, English Obis, Instead English, kola nut, trying forge identity, common ground, shame community, community views, nigerians view, trying forge, forge identity, european post, nigerians english, identity based, forge identity based,
Approximate Word count = 1391
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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