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Fiction. Literature. Historical Fiction. HTML:A classic story of moral struggle in an age of turbulent social change and the final book in Chinua Achebe's The African TrilogyWhen Obi Okonkwo, grandson of Okonkwo, the main character in Things Fall Apart returns to Nigeria from England in the 1950s, his foreign education separates him from his African roots. No Longer at Ease, the third and concluding novel in Chinua Achebe's The African Trilogy, depicts the uncertainties that beset the nation of Nigeria, as independence from colonial rule loomed near. In Obi Okonkwo's experiences, the ambiguities, pitfalls, and temptations of a rapidly evolving society are revealed. He is part of a ruling Nigerian elite whose corruption he finds repugnant. His fate, however, overtakes him as he finds himself trapped between the expectation of his family, his village�??both representations of the traditional world of his ancestors�??and the colonial world. A story of a man lost in cultural limbo, and a nation entering a new age of disillusionment, No Longer at Ease is a powerful metaphor for his generation of young Nige… (more)
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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
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….
"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?
"No Longer At Ease" frames the gradual undoing of a young man saddled with being the collective
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.
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.
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.
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.