No longer at ease

by Chinua Achebe

Paper Book, 1969

Status

Available

Publication

New York : Fawcett Premier, 1969.

Description

After returning to Africa from his education abroad, Obi Okonkwo feels alienated and disgusted at the fact that he has been thrust into the ruling class, of whom most are corrupt.

User reviews

LibraryThing member Isgodchekhov
Na so dis world be…

Since it has a bearing on my review of Chinua Achebe’s 1960 follow up novel to his monumental first work, Things Fall Apart, I will confess here that my first reaction to reading Thing’s Fall Apart was a shrug of my mind’s shoulders…It struck me then as a tragic story
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admirably told, but unremarkable. For whatever reason, I had overlooked its subtleties, and Okwonko’s plight did not draw me in. It could have been that I was lulled by the narrative’s calm voice and simple seeming language…

The protagonist of No Longer At Ease, Obi Okwonko is the grandson of the first novel’s protagonist, Okwonko. The setting has shifted two generations in time and 500 miles away from Okwonkos’ fictional Ibo village of Umuofia to Lagos, Nigeria. It’s third person narrator focused mainly from Obi, unfolds the story in chronological order AFTER the opening chapter. Or to put it another way, the entire narrative is one long flashback after the opening. The first section of the first chapter takes the reader inside a Lagos courtroom where Obi is on trial for bribery, and the third section is a scene where his Ibo kinsmen are holding an emergency meeting of the Umuofia Progressive Union to discuss their position on supporting their ‘prodigal son’.

Where we then fade back to the Obi Okwonko’s apprenticeship…
Obi ‘has book’, he has been college educated, having been sent to England on a scholarship loan scraped together by the poor townsfolk as part of The Progressive Union, their attempt to give their kinsmen’s son’s and daughter’s a chance for a future in the ever changing society. Obi is outspoken and headstrong, like his grandfather. Attention is made to this by a tribal elder when he returns to his rural village in a hometown-boy-makes-good sort of welcome feast. In a doubly ironic application of biblical scripture that the Ibo repeat as their adherence to the old ways, while also a portent for later events:

“Remark him”, said Odogwu. “He is Oguefi Ogwonko come back. He is Okwonko kpom-kwem, exact, perfect”

Obi’s father cleared his throat in embarrassment. “Dead men do not come back, “ he said.

“I tell you this is Okwonko. As it was in the beginning so it will be in the end.. That is what your religion tell us”

Our hero’s education in the ways of the world of modern Lagos is a painful one. He has taken his degree in English rather than Law against the plans of his Ibo Union. He has widened his cultural perspective and with it, he has developed ideals about how to improve the system of Civil advancement in his Nigeria that is driven by bribery. We get a foretaste of it when a bus he is riding in is pulled over by young military ‘officers’ ostensibly checking the driver’s license. Obi asks the driver why he agreed to pay the bribe, the reply ‘Na so dis world be’…

The novel draws out the complexity of Nigeria’s state of flux, morally, spiritually, and psychologically. More importantly Achebe manages keep authorial distance in a calm, wise voice…
Obi sees himself as a pioneer for cultural adaptation. His ideals are tested in a city that his Ibo kinsmen have warned him hold temptations too great for him. Achebe does a skillful job of balancing our perspective of the opposing cultural forces at play, examining the very human consequences at the intersection when two culture’s world views misunderstand each other. As in the earlier novel, wrestling is associated subtextually with confrontation on the deeper level, of struggling with old ways. Obi is seen by his clansmen as challenging his chi (personal gods) to personal combat. His clan’s forbearance with him is tested (its important to remember the blood ties here, he is under obligations to meet their expectations as their bright hope), at one point they call him a “Beast O no nation’…. Obi’s moral courage, his dignity of holding to his ideals is challenged by choices he is finally forced to make. He bears the shame and guilt of a betrayer, but he can be only be a betrayer: of either his ideals, or his clan’s tradition.

In moment of epiphany, Obi reflects on his mother and father, and compares his mother as woman who got things done, to his father, who is a man of thought.

"These thoughts…seemed to release his spirit. He no longer felt guilt. He, too had died. Beyond death there are no ideals and no humbug, only reality. The impatient idealist says: “Give me a place to stand and I shall move the earth”. But such a place does not exist. We all stand on the earth itself and go with her at her pace."

What I took away.
A new appreciation for an author and his culture’s struggles. Also an opinion that the two novels complement and resonate off each other, increasing understanding of each. Achebe’s prose mastery is more apparent when comparing TFA’s adaptation to English the simple music in the language of Ibo’s tribal world, held against the varied dictions he captured in the characters who came from heterogenous backgrounds of the modern colonial Africa of NLAE. One is struck by Achebe’s amazing ear to depict all.
Achebe does not resort to tricks and ploys so often encountered in contemporary literature. No sensory overload, no heaps of ironic aphorisms here. His muted voice moves at the pace of the earth. His controversial essay on Conrad is a Hot Button topic, and no matter which side of the fence your sensibilities lie on this, it should hopefully not influence a certain Swedish academy….
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LibraryThing member Crazymamie
This is the second book in Achebe's African Trilogy. The main character in this book, Obi Okonkwo, is the grandson of Okonkwo, the main character from the first book, Things Fall Apart. I did not like this book as well as the first one, but it is still very good and definitely worth the time it
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takes to read it. Things have changed in the village of Umuofia while Obi has been away at school in England.

"It seemed more like a decade than four years, what with the miseries of winter when his longing to return home took on the sharpness of physical pain. It was in England that Nigeria first became more than just a name to him. That was the first great thing that England did for him."

Obi had been sent to England to study, and is now expected to return to his village a hero. With his degree, he is expected to take a government job in Lagos and start repaying the cost of his education which was sponsored by his village. Remaining true to himself, Obi will soon find, is not easy while he stands with one foot anchored firmly in the traditional values of his village and the other foot searching for solid ground on which to stand in the more modern city of Lagos. Constantly pulled in different directions, Obi learns that it is impossible to please everyone.

"A university degree was the philosopher's stone. It transmuted a third-class clerk on one hundred and fifty a year into a senior civil servant on five hundred and seventy, with car and luxuriously furnished quarters at nominal rent. And the disparity in salary and amenities did not tell even half the story. To occupy a 'European post' was second only to actually being a European. It raised a man from the masses to the elite whose small talk at cocktail parties was: 'How's the car behaving?'"

And what of his own morale compass? Must the cost of his education also be repaid with a piece of his soul?
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LibraryThing member fieldnotes
Chinua Achebe's reputation earns too much exposure for his jaded and pessimistic stories about how the traditions, cultures and institutions of Africa inevitably destroy its most promising individuals.

"No Longer At Ease" frames the gradual undoing of a young man saddled with being the collective
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investment of his rural Nigerian community. Their fraternal society pay for his school fees and sponsor his European education so that he can return to Nigeria and use his credentials to acquire a government job that gives him leverage to advance the fraternal society his friends and his family.

Watch as financial pressures weaken the integrity and resolve of this young man who can't even enjoy the love of his favorite woman because she is tainted by the magical thinking of his tribe. A cast of stereotypes and caricatures accompany our protagonist through a demoralizing series of mundane misfortunes (Oh no! I didn't realize that I had to pay for car insurance! Hospital bills for my mother!). As these non-events unfold, a few representatives of white civilization shake their heads over cold beers in the country club, so disappointed in the lost potential.

The book lacks imagination, it lacks joy, it lacks style and it lacks importance. It's ripe for a generic high school essay; but it doesn't merit an unforced reading. Skip.
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LibraryThing member thesmellofbooks
It's been awhile since I read Things Fall Apart--one of the best books I think I've read, in many ways. No Longer at Ease perhaps lacks some of the emotional impact of the first book, but it is a subtler drama, and expertly written. These are two books I wish everyone would read. Maybe several
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times.

I have just read the previous reviews of this book. Although Obi gives in to bribery and is punished for it, I don't see the book as a condemnation of traditional culture, but as a careful examination of the pressures placed on an idealistic and independent person by the compression of two cultures together. I don't read this as the end of his life, but as a painful point he can recover from. Remember that we learn throughout the book that the Umuofia do not abandon each other even for fairly serious failings in judgement. The character is drawn with such clarity and compassion that I believe in his integrity and his ability to absorb and learn from his ordeal. We all have terrible trials in our lives. They do not need to be the end of us, and Obi is far from alone in his world.
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LibraryThing member Smiley
Not as good as "Things Fall Apart" but nearly so. In some ways more subtle than the first novel, but also trapped in early 60's. Not as universal as "Things" and does not hold up as well.
LibraryThing member amurphy
Sequal to Things Fall Apart. Obi Okonkwo, grandson to Okonkwo, returns to Nigera after four years of education in England. Finding a job within the government, he finds himself in between two worlds, the traditions of his people clashing with the expectations of an evolving society. An excellent
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book showing that as Africans become more accepting of the changes brought by the West, they are still caught within the beliefs of their ancestors.
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LibraryThing member soylentgreen23
Read 'Things Fall Apart' first - it gives you an essential grounding in the history and culture of Igbo society in pre-colonial times, so that when you read about the social mores of post-war Nigeria it all makes a lot more sense. A young Nigerian is sent to England to study with a loan paid for by
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his village; on his return he takes a government job and has to start paying off his debt. However, the government job doesn't pay as well as everyone thinks, and there are other costs of living that nobody ever considered - the cost of running a car, of having a girlfriend, of paying income tax...

Like Orwell's 'Keep The Aspidistra Flying' this is a tragedy of finances as a man is overwhelmed and undone by the obligations placed upon him by the simple economics of living. A fine novel.
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LibraryThing member Limelite
Obi is on trial for accepting a bribe. Achebe examines his life and themes of colonial and post colonial relationships between Nigerians and the white English as well as the conflict between tribal/clan loyarlties, traditions, and Western culture impinging on the lives of him, his family, and his
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associates.

Highly concentrated little novel that has me examining it closely and writing in the margins in order not to miss any of its literary, symbolic, and thematic content.

Achebe’s style is direct, sympathetic, and tinged with bleak irony. While he writes about decent people, the pull of corruption undercuts their well-meaning actions, turning them into criminals. The implication being that as long as Nigeria is suffused with superstitions, clan ties that are stronger than national identity, and unable to forsake traditional habits of “gifting” bureaucrats to grease the wheels of society, the country is doomed to be poor, to grind her talented and educated young to dust, and to destroy itself.
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LibraryThing member brakketh
The promise and corruption of the education and integration of Obi (a young Nigerian) into the European system and the ways that this fails.
LibraryThing member snash
A look at the struggle between African and Western cultures in Nigeria right before Independence as told from an English educated Nigerian's life.
LibraryThing member KurtWombat
NO LONGER AT EASE is a beautifully realized tug-of-war with a human being as the rope. Obi Okonkwo returns to Africa after being educated in England thinking that he pretty much knows who he is. The ease with which he defines himself is tested as soon as he gets off the boat and begins his new
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life. Obi is caught between white and black cultures, European and African mindsets, poverty versus affluence, family versus personal and even how a man deals with women. Author Chinua Achebe does not allow Obi to battle one conflict at a time but instead marvelously shows how there might be multiple issues pulling on either side of the rope at any given time. In the midst of Obi's battles, the novel deftly ribs everyone with a soft touch. Characters cannot help but reveal themselves. As they so often fall back on the clichés of their own cultures and natures, they reveal how limited their understanding of the world around them really is. Obi is blind to some of the things that might make his life easier (for someone facing financial worries, it never occurs to him to dismiss his driver or his houseboy) but the author allows us to see it if we will--nothing is forced at the reader. The world is presented and the reader has to realize what Obi does not on their own. While Achebe's previous book THINGS FALL APART deals with a community and culture being destroyed dramatically by advancing machines spewing black smoke and death, NO LONGER AT EASE shows a slower crumbling destruction without a clue what if anything might rise from the debris. While I liked the previous book better--probably because on a human level it was easier to follow a protagonist who truly knew who he was--I still enjoyed this one though I wish it had more to it. At a light 154 pages, I wished it had a little more heft to it. Would like to have known a little bit more about a lot of other characters and learned more about Obi's culture but it is the rope and what the rope feels like as it gets pulled that is emphasized and not those pulling on the rope.
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LibraryThing member cbl_tn
This novel opens with Nigerian civil servant Obi Okonkwo in the dock for taking a bribe. The rest of the novel tells us how he got there. Achebe explores the clash of cultures between Nigerians and British colonial administrators, with Obi as a tragic hero. Readers will come away with a better
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understanding of the negative effects of colonialism and the cultural tensions in the years leading up to Nigerian independence.
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