CHAPTER – 3
MERGING WITH MODERNITY: NO LONGER AT EASE
AND A MAN OF THE PEOPLE
The Modern Nigerian – ill-at-ease
Achebe’s second novel No Longer at Ease (1960) is intended as a sequel to
Things Fall Apart, set in the capital of Nigeria in the late 1950s, and its hero Okonkwo’s
grandson Obi Okonkwo, a young westernized bureaucrat who finds himself torn between
two cultures - the old and the new. The new force is not an alien region or administration,
but the attitudes of the young, urbanized Nigerian, having been liberated from the taboos
of tribal life through exposure to other values, which comes to question the traditions and
belief of his ancestors. Achebe demonstrates that the modern Nigerian is ill-at-ease in a
society, which is no longer recognizably his own and consistently fails to conform to his
idealized picture.
T. S. Eliot’s quotation with which Achebe prefixes the title, No Longer at Ease
refers to the disenchantment which is the major theme. Obi returns from an alien country
to discover the assumptions of his elders, and the traditional society apart, no longer
coinciding with his view of life. At the time he drifts in corrupt, modern Lagos. He lacks
the resourcefulness to handle the dilemma and is crushed by clash, to end in tragedy.
No Longer at Ease traces the long impact of colonialism in West Africa,
dramatizes social and economic dilemmas facing modern Africa. The stylistic and the
thematic ground work are important works of African literature. It is not about the
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breakup of traditional society which has been powerfully treated in Things Fall Apart.
Indeed, the kind of society presented is consolidating than disintegrating.
The traditional way of life represented by Obi’s home village and the Umuofia
Progressive society is strong and durable. It has its own culture and values, its wisdom
for support. It is not a dying society. Therefore a shift of emphasis between the first novel
and the second is no longer the decay of one society to the superior one, but the clash
between the new intellectual elite and the hero.
Conflict between Tradition and Modernity
The major theme of No Longer at Ease is the conflict between tradition and
modernity. On the one hand, the protagonist, Obi Okonkwo is a creation of his people,
his village and his family. They have raised him and funded his education and they
expect him to come back and contribute to the community. On the other hand, he is much
a product of the English Colonial system. He is a Christian, has been educated in England
and knows English Literature. He sees himself as an individual not as a representative of
his race or his village. Corruption is another major theme in the novel. Obi works in a
system in which corruption is taken for granted but is seen as a specific failing of the
natural population. Obi is strong enough to resist it for a long time, but when he is at his
weakest; he succumbs and pays the price.
Achebe is aware of the strength of traditional Ibo society as well as its weakness,
and reflects the unsurety of his vision, holding the balance between admiration and gentle
contempt. On the other side, this society is self sacrificing, closely knit and concerned
with morality. They tax themselves to collect money to send their brighter young men
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and women to study in England. On the day of Obi’s departure the beneficiary of the
scholarship fund gather in his home to offer their best wishes and advice.
I have heard of young men from their towns who went to the white man’s
country, but instead of facing their studies they went after the sweet things
of the flesh. Some of them even married white women’. The crowd
murmured its strong disapproval of such behaviour. ‘A man who does that
is lost to his people. He is like rain wasted in the forest. I would have
suggested getting a wife before you leave. But that time is too short now.
Anyway, I know that we have no fear where you are concerned. We are
sending you to learn books. Enjoyment can wait. Do not be a hurry to rush
into the pleasures of the world like young Antelope who danced herself
lame when the main dance was yet to come’…. The gathering ended with
the singing of ‘Praise God from whom all blessings flow’. The guests then
said their farewells to Obi, many of them repeating all the advice he had
been already given. They shook hands with him and as they did so, they
pressed their presents into his palm, to buy a pencil with, or an exercise
book or a loaf of bread for the journey, a shilling there and penny there –
substantial presents in a village where money was so rare, where men and
women toiled from year to year to wrest a meager living from an
unwilling and exhausted soil (NLE 12-13).
This is a gentle raillery at the Umuofians cultural and racial introversion, long
windedness, but there is admiration for the high moral principles and selflessness. They
ask him to study law and order to help the people to settle their land cases. Umuofians
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gave Obi the scholarship on their own interests. They don’t see the real purpose of
education of developing the individual, but as a tool to help the clan and protect its claims
against others. On his return, they expect him to use his influence as a senior civil officer
on their behalf and finding jobs for members of the society:
We are not going to ask him to bring his salary to among us. It is in little
things like this that he can help us. It is our fault if we do not approach
him. Shall we kill a snake and carry it in our hand when we have a bag for
putting long things in?(NLE 22).
The members of the Umuofia Progressive Society fail to realize that by educating
Obi they give him the chance to acquire ideals that is bound to be more liberal. They have
transformed him into one of the elites, and help him live up to his status, which they
themselves are proud. On his return, they calmly try to detribalize him. They are
strangely inconsistent about modernity. The Umofians expect Obi to dress like a
European, not because they now accept like a European values, but it adds to their glory.
One of their members seen driving ‘a pleasure car’ boosts their prestige:
Obi admitted that his people had a sizeable point. What they did not know
was that, having labored in sweat and tears to enroll their kinsman among
the shining elite, they had to keep them there. Having made him a member
of an exclusive club whose members greet one another with “How’s the
car behaving?” did they expect him to turn around and answer; “I’m sorry,
but my car is off the road. You see I couldn’t pay the insurance premium.
(NLE 99).
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Obi, the ideal Man
One feels the pathos of Obi’s situation more forceful on his return from England.
He returns back full of love and admiration for his country. During his first meeting with
the Umuofians, Obi takes great pride to his country men and their traditional ways and
compares with the Englishmen. Back home, he finds vitality, neighborliness and the art
of conservation to its highest values.
At first Obi refuses to identify himself with new Nigeria, behaving instead in
genuine humility and sincerity. He is neither a philanderer like Joseph and Christopher
nor as extravagant; he is not a parasite fattening on his country’s labour like the
honorable Sam Okoli. He has the highest principles and values. He is genuinely against
bribery, corruption, incompetence and nepotism. But Obi’s ideals are too theoretical and
he is bound to be disappointed.
Meeting the Demands of the Society
However, Umuofian society makes the most impossible demands on him and
forces him to conform to its own standards. The struggle is the dispute over his marriage
with Clara, an Osu. This issue exposes completely the narrow mindedness of the
traditional society and the hasty tactlessness of the modern man. Achebe’s artistic touch
is realistic.
In examining the attitudes of the people to Clara and the problem of osu, we come
to know how much is Obi advanced in his society. Christopher and Joseph are both
modern young men, but they are horrified of Obi’s marriage with an osu, Mrs. Okonkwo
threatens to commit suicide if Obi marries Clara during her life time and Mr. Okonkwo
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who in his day rebelled against his own father and tradition, now becomes so set in his
ways that he fails to see that Christianity is opposed to all forms of discrimination.
In display of his anger Obi questions the right of his society to interfere in his
personal affairs and he refuses to accept the offer to defer payment of the loan. Almost all
his problems seem to stem from this. Having made him free from the traditionalism, Obi
still fails to achieve complete freedom from the clutches of decadent modern Lagos. The
scenes of modern Lagos are by no means as compelling as those associated with
traditional Ibo society in Things Fall Apart and with the dream that Obi had once:
On the other side of the road a little boy wrapped in a cloth was selling
bean cakes or akara under a lamp-post. His bowl of akara was lying in
the dust and he seemed half asleep. But he really wasn’t, for as soon as the
night-soil-man passed, swinging his broom and hurricane lamp and
trailing clouds of putrefaction the boy quickly sprang to his feet and began
calling him names. This man made for him with his broom but the boy
was already in flight, his bowl of akara on his head. The man grinding
maize burst into laughter, and the women joined in. The night soil man
smiled went his way, having said something very rude about the boy’s
mother . . . During his winter in England he had written a callow, nostalgic
poem about Nigeria . . . he recalled this poem and then turned and then
looked at the rotting dog in the storm drain and smiled. ‘I’ve taster putrid
flesh in the spoon’, he said through clenched teeth. ‘Far more apt’. At last
Clara emerged from the side street and they drove away (NLE 28-29).
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The dead dogs, putrefaction and akara bring out the degradation, but the passage
brings the quality of the modern Lagos. The filth there is real fellow feeling, neighborliness,
the name calling is good humored and without any bitterness. It looks as though the
inhabitants of Lagos had decided to suffer together and the stoicism elicits the reader’s
sympathy. Furthermore, Achebe responds to the vitality of Lagos than to the elegant
Ikoyi. In spite of its luxurious bungalows and flats and its greenery, Ikoyi was like a
grave yard.
As a part of the portrayal of Lagos society Achebe demonstrates the aimlessness
of people like Christopher, Joseph, Bisi, Clara and the honorable Sam Okoli and their
preoccupation with sex, cars and entertainment. To Obi’s credit, he is different. The
problems of living in Lagos are proved too much for him. Obi must play his part in the
modern city and acquire all the tapering of success, but at the same time he is
traditionally accepted to play his role in the extended family system.
Consequently, he has to pay the installments to his car, refund twenty pounds a
month to the Umuofia Progressive Union, pay his income tax, his insurance, and his
electricity bill and he has to send to his parents ten pounds a month. He also pays his
younger brother’s school fees and shoulders a larger part of his mother’s funeral
expenses. This financial blow falls on him with agonizing and sympathy. Faced with the
necessity of making these two ends meet, he succumbs to the very bribery and corruption.
At the beginning of the novel, everyone wonders why Obi did it? The novel provides the
answer to their questions. Achebe demonstrates how the forces in modern and traditional
Nigeria destroy Obi.
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Obi’s Weakness
In Things Fall Apart Achebe’s insight into the social forces shapes the novel.
It derives the interest from the social analysis. But No Longer at Ease has flaws. First the
hero is weak and insufficiently realized. Obi Okonkwo was conceived as Jamesian
‘central consciousness’ (78) around all the events the novel revolves. The other character
throws light on his predicament. For a central consciousness he is too uninteresting and
vaguely portrayed. Rather determining the events, Obi allows events to overtake him and
is merely bourn along by the force of circumstance. A tragic hero should possess
impressive qualities. Obi succumbs to the forces; he falls short of tragic stature. Nor is he
a martyr, since he is crushed for revealing his principles, not for championing it.
Although Obi frequently figures in the novel, his personality is hazy. Achebe
must take the blame, for he seems to be between the reader and his creation. James Ngugi
remarks that the “Omniscient author’’ (71) can allow a story to errant from the
consciousness of the hero. Achebe is clear in relating the hero’s thoughts and action.
Obi’s consciousness is the basic cause of the ignorance of the hero’s actions and
results in psychological improbabilities in the novel. Was it necessary or not, for Obi to
rouse to such uncontrollable anger at the meeting of Umuofia Meeting Society, the
question of bribery. The idealistic Obi will have surrendered so easily to temptation,
although his financial position was desperate, an agonizing inner struggle. But there is no
such inner torment. He merely sinks deeper into corruption and continues to take bribe
even after his financial position is improved.
Obi’s love affair with Clara is destroyed by his society’s conservatism. Achebe
does not demonstrate that social forces are to be blamed at home. When Obi was
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questioned about his relationship with Clara, although his father expresses complete
disapproval, it is obvious that he will be won in time, since he himself had been a rebel.
Mrs. Okonkwo’s objections are serious - she threatens to kill herself if Obi marries Clara,
and she virtually gives him permission until he waits her death.
Obi is intelligent to realize all. He states this position to Clara on his return to
Lagos. But Clara responds in the most unreasonable way. She decides to break off the
engagement. Clara is repelled by Obi’s weaknesses and annoyed that he respects his
family’s feelings higher than his affection for her. But she always knew that Obi’s family
will have objection for their marriage and volunteered to break off the engagement.
She expected that Obi’s trip to his hometown will immediately change the heart of his
parents. Her motives are obscure. The affair is destroyed, by the clash between the old
and the new and by Clara’s unreasonable behavior. Obi returns to Lagos and breaks up
with Clara, who is pregnant. She refuses to marry him. He needs to come up with money
for abortion expenses. He borrows money from a politician and Clara is hospitalized for
several weeks. In the meantime his mother died and Obi cannot offer to go home for the
funeral.
The members of Umuofia Community in Lagos come to offer their condolence
and points out that Obi’s father also skipped his father’s funeral, a sign of disrespect.
The financial situation is too difficult for Obi. He has lost his mother and his finance; he
no longer cares about himself or his reputation and so gives in to the prevailing
atmosphere of corruption. He accepts first one bribe, then others. He is careful to accept
bribe only from qualified applicants. Nevertheless he is caught in a string operation and
arrested for bribery, the trial for which began the novel.
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Obi, a Tragic Figure
Obi Okonkwo, like his grandfather, is essentially a tragic figure. He should have
everything he needs: money, education, intelligence and even integrity. Just like his
grandfather was successful in Ibo society, Obi is successful in a modern Nigerian society.
The feeling of success ultimately eludes him because there are so many calls on his
resources. As various ropes tighten around Obi – family, community, love, money, the
responsibility of the educated native to represent his race to the English colonial power
structure - the readers is inclined to believe, as Obi does that he will find a way out of his
various predicaments, but the structures in which he functions are too rigid to give him
any freedom of moment, and he meets his inevitable tragic end. No one force can be said
to be truly responsible for his fate, but in combination they are fatal.
The Decadence of the Modern Urban Environment
In No Longer at Ease official corruption is one manifestation of the decadence
tied to the modern urban environment. Urban decadence and volatility is the idea of rural
piety and stability. The conflict between tradition and modernity also translates as the
conflict between rural values and urban ones.
The main conflict in Things Fall Apart, between Africa and Europe, especially
that between the Igbo and the British, have turned in No Longer at Ease into the conflict
between British imposed modernity and African tradition. The novel gets its interest in
Achebe’s social concern; “terse, ironic, lucid and unpretentious style; his scintillating wit”
(enotes.com), his objectivity, and maturity. He holds the balance between the admiration and
mockery of Umuofia society. His statements are with ironic meaning, for example, the
welcome presented by the Secretary of the Umuofia Progressive Union.
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Welcome Address presented to Michael Obi Okonkwo B.A (Hons),
London, by the officers of the Umuofia Progressive Union
on the occasion of his return from the United Kingdom in quest
of the Golden Fleece. Sir, we the officers and members of the above
named Union present with humility and gratitude this token of our
appreciation of your unprecedented academic brilliance . . ..
He spoke of the great honour Obi had brought to the ancient town of Umuofia
which could now join the community of other towns in their march towards social
equality and economic emancipation. Needless to say, this address was repeatedly
interrupted by cheers and the clapping of hands. “What a sharp young man! He deserved
to go to England himself”. He wrote the kind of English they admired if not understood
(NLE 34-35).
Achebe’s satiric style is most economical and making his points effectively.
Achebe analyses the problems confronting the young men in modern Nigeria with
realism and intelligent objectivity. He wisely desists the resolving dilemma of the two
forces, the old and new will continue to exert a pull on the educated elite.
In No Longer at Ease Achebe presents, through its hero Obi Okonkwo, a tragic
story of the modern African state. The novel balances a Nigerian ‘modernity’- social,
political and economic implications of the accommodation to the colonial rule with an
awareness of the price Nigerians have paid for their ‘modernity’
Obi, a Hybrid of Two Cultures
Obi Okonkwo is a hybrid of two cultures, the African and the European.
The Europeans could not understand how someone who had the privilege of a western
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education did not follow the rules of conduct he had imbibed. In a society where
education advancement is taken seriously and ethnic groups compete with one another.
Obi is in love with his native tongue, and it holds a place in his heart. At the same
time, however, he is also comfortable with the English language. African tradition and
English culture collide therefore to his roots. But this does not mean that he will not
revolt against his family and the new things he has learnt through his education in
England. He is more liberal and ‘European’ in his beliefs and is ready to marry Clara,
despite her history, but in the end, he gives in to his mother’s words and proves that
blood is thicker than water. In other words, his mother is symbolic of his traditional
culture and Obi proves that he is no better than any other. He has also turned to his roots.
Obi Okonkwo’s situation is because it was aggravated by the lack of social
protection of conscience and lack of public morality. There is inevitable conflict between
these and the hero’s dependence on tradition. The reason for such a crisis was the
increased human expectations in the Nigerian society in 1950s and the ongoing struggle
for decolonization and human emancipation as well as the rapid economic and social
progress. To these was added the revolt against paternalism. The bonds of human
communication had begun to break down as a result of coming in contact with a wider
world. Most of the traditional structures in the area of politics and religion were falling
apart.
Nigerian society was evolving into modernity and this new climate confronted
Obi Okonkwo. He is torn apart in his desire to follow the path of his forefathers and at
the same time to blaze his own trail and finally he seeks his own path and risks his whole
future and position. His heightened awareness of self-fulfilled personhood is
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unfortunately misdirected. What he revolts against is the danger of human
homogenization, robotization, and depersonalization, which have begun to plague his
social order. He seeks to overcome the enslavement of custom and the boredom of
tradition. He is firmly set against any constraint against his personal moral decisions,
even if it means steeping himself in evil practices. He is opposed to outmoded social
institutions, ideologies, traditions, and even patterns of thought and behavior.
Balancing of Cultures
Finally we see that Obi Okonkwo must commiserate with himself for a dual
failure of responsibility. He committed exactly what he had set out to fight against breaking tradition and corruption. He was not true to his salt, rebelling against tradition
and an ancestral world picture. Again he was not true to his new social status as an
educated man, whose character should have been irreproachable. In other words, Obi
could have used his education to take his country back into his own hands, even though it
was given to him by the colonizer. The only way to survive in a world where two cultures
meet is to allow a certain amount of mixing which should be used in a positive regard.
The sad thing is that Obi Okonkwo did not do the expected. The novel ends where
it began. The people of Umoufia, the judge, the British council man, and everyone are
asking themselves why a man of such promise committed such an act. Of course, the
entire novel is answering this question by tracing Obi’s life, but there are really no
answers in the end. The most pessimistic aspect of the novel is that it is cyclical.
Sometimes cycle can mean re-birth, but in this case, the cycle is one of repletion and
endless mistakes. One might ask him or herself ‘why’ to understand the novel. Achebe
wanted the novel to be cyclical to indicate a continuous sense of description and even
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stagnation. In the end, Obi finds himself expelled from his old idealistic self and in a
mode of complacency, and the circle emphasizes the danger of that complacency.
Achebe excels in linguistic excellence and in keen portrayal of the inevitable
struggle between the old and the new. In the situation that ex-colonial people find
themselves it is difficult to dissociate their literature from the inevitable conflict between
traditional culture and the culture of the metropolitan European authority. Achebe
captures revolutionary periods of national life, such as could have been written in the
renaissance, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of English History.
No longer at Ease investigates, from different perspectives, the phenomenon of
bribery in Nigeria’s life. Green represents the typical colonial attitude which professes to
bring light to the heart of darkness, to tribal head-hunters performing weird ceremonies
and grotesque rites. It is the old racist mystique of saving the continent from spiritual
void, mental stagnation, from evil and irrational forces. According to him, the African
“has been a victim of the worst climate in the world and of every imaginable disease...he
has been sapped mentally and physically. We have brought him Western education. But
what use is it to him”? (NLE 6).
Obi is a western-educated young man who is proud of being an African and is
conscious of the depth, power and beauty of his language, music and the zest for life.
He asks the Englishman to :
listen to the talk of men who made a great art of conversation. Let them
come and see men and women and children who know how to live, whose
joy of life had not yet been killed by those who claimed to teach other
nations how to live ( NLE 8).
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In Nigeria, Obi has to listen to Green’s arrogant remarks denigrating his
countrymen: “The African is corrupt through and through. I am all for equality and all
that. But equality won’t alter facts”. Green naturally suspects the African capacity for
self-rule: “There is no single Nigerian who is prepared to forego 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.” To which Obi coolly rejoins:
It is not the fault of Nigerian, “you devised the soft conditions for
yourselves when every European was automatically in the senior service
and every African automatically in the junior service. Now that a few of us
have been admitted into the senior service, you turn round and blame
us”(NLE 139-40).
The most poignant fact in Nigeria that rattles Obi is the loss of nerve and the
resultant docility in the poverty-stricken masses who suffer mutely, resigning themselves
to misfortune. The elitist and educated section has succumbed to the lure of money and
power. Achebe sensitively explores the consequent moral plight of Obi in a corrupt
establishment. The issue that weighs upon him is:
Can an individual civil servant with nationalist aspirations and Ideals
survive with dignity in a place where bribery in its many forms operates
and where a skillful manipulation of money and influence is what really
matters? What kind of democracy can exist side by side with so much
corruption and ignorance? (NLE41).
One method, he introspects, is to raise the consciousness of the people to
revolt against such banes in public life but that appears to him - under the
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prevalent circumstances - a vague prospect, an uncertain proposition. The
other alternative is to have a change at the top - possibly a man of vision, an
enlightened dictator, but the very idea reeks of a frightening, bloodletting
violence.
Obi was a frustrated man even in his personal life. His parents would not permit
him to marry the girl he loved because she was declared an untouchable, Osu ‘a
forbidden caste to the end of time’. He was caught in the vortex of personal, familial and
social pressures and in a tense, unguarded moment, an unintentional lapse on his part led
to his arrest. He had to face public shame at the trial for allegedly accepting a small bribe
of 20 pounds. It was, in fact, a well-laid trap since the police knocked at his door soon
after the party had left the money on the table, despite Obi’s ‘no’ to such an overture.
Obi’s friend Charles had said,
In these circumstances if one didn’t laugh, one would have to cry. Can an
educated young man afford to be virtuous when the price for it is nothing
less than staking his own security, peace and future? Even, if an individual
is prepared to make a sacrifice at such cost, would it cause a dent
anywhere in a society where education meant to get as much as they can
for themselves and their family. Not the least bit interested in the millions
of their country who die every day from hunger and disease.(NLE 108).
Under these conditions, young men normally take to easy options - a legacy left
by the colonialists. Obi is thus torn between the forces of tribal backwardness, ignorance
and orthodoxy which he cannot reform and the lure of easy money and comfort which he
cannot completely resist.
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Contemporary Times
According to Bernth:
In his fourth novel, A Man of the People (1966), Achebe brought the
historical record right up to contemporary times. Indeed, this novel,
published only nine days after Nigeria experienced its first military coup,
even ended with a military coup. It appeared that Achebe had predicted
with strange accuracy at end of his country’s first republic. A Man of the
People belongs to the same tradition of Things Fall Apart and No Longer
at Ease. It examines the strains and stresses in local. In the Ibo society the
colonialists go forward, and the problems are faced by the educated
classes in modern Nigeria. In this novel, Achebe shows what the Nigerians
make of their country when the imperialistic leave. It denounces the
political corruption of the new governing classes. This explains the
enormous popularity that the novel has achieved.
Achebe gives
expression to the disgust that most Nigerians and Africans have felt at
their elected representatives of their countries.
A Man of the People - a Satire
A Man of the People is different from the earlier novels. It is a first person
narrative told from limited point of view. It is that rare bird in a corpus of African
Literature – a comic novel. After the tragic grandeur of Things Fall Apart and the
pessimism of No longer at Ease it is refreshing to turn to a novel which stirs a belly
laugh (enotes.com).
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A Man of the People is a satirical, first person narrative. This poses technical
problems, for Achebe uses the narrator Odili to laugh at certain institutions and people,
and he laughs at Odili himself. The true subject of this novel is not really political
corruption but the corrupting power of privilege position and money. The hero is not the
Chief Nanga, but the narrator Odili. The interest lays not in Chief Nanga’s corrupt
activities, but the process to which Odili gradually succumbs to the temptations of
political success and resembles his attitude as chief Nanga himself.
Achebe’s great technical talent is in using Odili both as his mouth piece against
corruption and exposing Odili’s own weakness to corruption. He must look at the society
through Odili’s eyes, but stands apart from him, observing critically. It is in the stylistic
skill that the achievement of A Man of the People lies.
The major personal conflict is between the Chief, Nanga M. P., and Odili Samalu,
his former pupil. The narrator Odili begins his story with a deliberate statement about
Nanga. This tone for the satire sometimes involves Odili himself:
No one can deny that the Chief. Nanga, M.P., was the most approachable
politician in the country. Whether you asked in the city or in his home
village, Anata, they would tell you he was a man of the people. I have to
admit this from the onset or else the story I’m going to tell make you
sense.(AMP 3).
By this statement Odili Samalu seeks to establish his creditability and it becomes
increasingly apparent that the labeling of Nanga as “a man of people” is intended and self
centered corruption, as his position as the Minister of Culture, given his confident and
ignorant flouting of manners and decorum. But it is part of the novel’s irony that as
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narrator of the incidents of the political struggle with Nanga and as portrait painter of the
man, Odili succeeds in exposing more of his own character and motivations than his
opponent’s, for the narrative is told from his point of view rather than from Nanga’s.
The stylistic infelicity is to show up the gap between the author and his hero. It gradually
becomes apparent it is not Achebe’s style but Odili’s. The language has been vulgarized
to indicate the indiscipline of Odili’s mind.
During Chief Nanga’s visit to Obili’s school at Anata, he is determined not to
remind the Minister that they had known once each other, determined not to, and he takes
no pride in the acquaintance, but when the minister is introduced, he holds his hand
stiffly. As soon as the chief recognizes and embraces him, he is delighted besides
himself. He is reflected with glory and increases his prestige in Anata. Similarly the
American woman, Jean, takes Odili on a tour of Lagos to show him the contrast between
the squalor in which the ordinary people live, and the greed of the governing classes, a
contrast that Odili had noted and developed. He is contemptuous and skeptical of the
woman’s professed love for Africa. In spite of his contempt, a few minutes later, he asks
whether he can see her again.
A club exhibition is opened by the chief Nanga and Achebe turns his ironic focus
from Jalio, the president of the club, to Chief Nanga and then to Odili himself. At the
start, Odili greets Jalio, a former schoolmate, but the latter with incredible snobbery,
takes his hand for he doesn’t remember Odili’s name, and not seems to care. But Odili,
reverses his high opinion of Jalio and his work. The Minister comment on Jalio’s dress
for the occasion is certainly a kind of false virtues Nanga endorses. He is a famous writer;
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he ought to adopt a style of dress. But Odili informs us “my sympathies will certainly be
with Jalio but I must confess I was a little pleased to see him deflated” (AMP 15).
Achebe uses Odili quite straight forwardly as a mouth piece, without any irony
against him:
As I stood in one corner of the vast tumult waiting for the arrival of the
Minister I felt intense bitterness welling up in my mouth. Here were silly,
ignorant villagers dancing themselves lame and waiting to blow off their
gun powder in honour of one of those who had started the country off
down the slopes of inflatation. I wished for a miracle, for a voice of
thunder, to hush this ridiculous festival and tell the poor contemptible
people one or two truths. But of course it would be quite useless. They
were not only ignorant but cynical. Tell them that this man had used his
position to enrich himself and they would ask you as my father did – if
you thought that a sensible man would spit out the juicy morsel that good
fortune placed in his mouth (AMP 6).
Achebe endorses Odili’s scorn for the ignorant cynicism of the Anata villagers. In
this novel, Achebe wields his craft with mastery, not only revealing the corruption in
Nigeria, but also exposing the flaws in Odili’s character and indicating the gap between
author and hero.
The Corrupting Power of Privilege
The subject of the novel is the corrupting power of privilege, which runs Odili.
The process of corruption begins in the first meeting with Nanga and the hero’s
unexpected boost. The sudden emergence into prominence with the realization that
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exploited his own advantage, goes to Odili’s head and destroys ideals. He deceives
himself in believing that his ideals are unchanged. For instance, he had mentioned to the
Minister that he had applied for a scholarship to do a post graduate course in Education.
He informs us that he had wished to solicit Minister’s assistance, since he was not
prepared to sell his soul for the privilege of going to Europe. And it was the minister
himself who reintroduced the subject. His assertion that he had avoided catching the
Minister’s attention and proposals is inoffensive and astonishing.
He invited me to come and spend my holidays with him in the capital and
while I was there he would try to find out from his Cabinet colleague, the
Minister of Overseas Training, whether there was anything doing. “If you
come as soon as you close”, he said, “you can stay in my guest room with
everything complete – bed room, parlor, bathroom, latrine, everything
– self contained. You can live by yourself and do anything you
like there, it’s all yours(AMP 28).
Odili is intelligent to realize the Minister intends using undue influence to get him
the scholarship. How can he, who supposedly, selling his soul, sees nothing offensive in
the Minister’s proposal? Those luxurious apartments, acquired by the corruption which
started the slopes of inflation are obvious to immoral purposes.
Even in No Longer at Ease, Obi gets into corruption to live a luxurious life and
social progress. The bonds of human communication had begun to break down as a result
of coming in contact with a wider world. Most of the traditional structures in the area of
politics and religion are falling apart.
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Odili accepts the Minister’s invitation and makes his ways to the capital, Bori, to
use the opportunity offered to continue his connection with Elsie, the pretty girl he had
met. Odili is basking in the voluptuary’s luxury of the minister’s house:
When I lay down in the double bed that seemed to ride on a Cushion of
air, and switched on that reading lamp and saw all the beautiful furniture
anew from the lying down position and looked beyond the door to the
gleaming bathroom and the towels as large as lappa I had to confess that if
I were at the moment made a minister I would be most anxious to remain
one forever. And may be I should have thanked God that I wasn’t. We
ignore man’s basic nature if we say, as some critics do that, because a man
like Nanga had risen from overnight poverty and insignificance to his
present opulence. He could be persuaded without much trouble to give it
up again and return to his original state (AMP 43-45).
He has enjoyed material comfort. Odili is perfectly prepared to defend the
Minister against the critics, who believed that the ministers should resign voluntarily
from office; on points of principle Odili begins to share the Minister’s point of view
once detested, and to endorse the cynical morality. Odili enjoys the deference and
respect when he turns up at the hospital in the Minister’s chauffeur driven Cadillac:
In our country a long American car driven by a white uniformed chauffeur
and flying a ministerial flag could pass through the eye of a needle. The
hospital gateman had promptly levered up the iron barrier and saluted. The
elderly male nurse I beckoned to had sprinted forward with an agility that
you would think had left him at least a decade ago. And as I said earlier,
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although it was against all the laws of the hospital they had let me into
female nurses quarters and woken up Elisie to see me (AMP 63).
The attitude of Odili to women is clearly similar to the minister. Odili’s lechery is
intensified at Bori while chief Nanga goes to sleep with Agnes, the elegant young
lawyer; he stays behind and sleeps with Jean, the beautiful wife of an American expert.
The Chief discusses women in offensive terms. He even swops tales of conquest with
Nanga and refers to the innocent Elsie as “a good time girl”. Odili patiently waits for the
Chief to go his room, so that he can make love to Elsie. Nanga outwits him and slipping
calmly to the girl’s room, seduces her.
Odili turns to politics, which is not of high minded idealism. Unlike Max and the
others he is not motivated by the desire to rid the country of parasites, but, to expose their
corruption to the world. His motive to enter the politics is revenge and he returns to
Anata not only to contest Nanga but also to seek out the intended parlor wife, and “give
her the works’. His ideals do not return, he gets involved in the political fight with such
satisfaction over party funds and car, that it makes the reader wonder how far he would
degenerate, if he were elected and appointed as minister.
I returned to Anata with a brand new Volkswagen. Eight hundred pounds
in currency notes and assurances that more would be forth coming.
I would have driven straight to see Edna but the shining cream coloured
car was covered in a thick coat of red dust and splattered with brown mud
from the long journey, so I decided to go home and wash first. Then I
drove in style to her place only to be told she had gone to see her
grandmother in another village (AMP 116).
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In the later part of the novel, Odili remains unattractive in spite of the Minister’s
obvious corruption. Indeed, Odili ranks as one of Achebe’s most unpleasant characters.
He is egoistic, vulgar, shallow minded. In spite of his college education, he is ready to
criticize others including his best friend Andrew Kadibe and Edna. He is tactless,
arrogant and immature. His insincerity and lack of warmth are verified again and again.
When Mrs. Nanga discusses the cultural problems she is facing and her children, Odili
can only make superior responses.
It is one of the paradoxes of the novel that the Chief, who was an embodiment of
corruption and ministerial incompetence, is actually a very charming and captivating
man. Achebe shows that the politician’s threat is all the more alarming because he can be
so charming and human. Nanga is an expert in the art of public relations and to keep in
contact with the people and their traditions he visits his village once a year, lest they
forget their indigenous customs. At the book exhibition including Odili and Jalio,
everybody is hypocritical, the Chief is the only person acting genuinely. He is a man of
great ebullience and generosity. We sympathize with him as we contemplate the demands
made on a man in his position.
‘You see what it means to be a minister’, said Chief Nanga as soon as his
visitor left. His voice sounded strangely tired and I felt suddenly sorry for
him. This was the nearest I had seen him come to despondency. “If I don’t
give him something now, tomorrow he will go and write rubbish about
me. They say it is the freedom of the press. But to me it is nothing short of
the freedom to crucify innocent men and assassinate their character’
(AMP 26).
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In spite of his palpable charm, there is evidence of Chief Nanga’s corruption
throughout the novel - Luxury flats he has built out of his share of the bribe offered by a
Government contract. The contrast between the luxurious life he lives out of his ill-gotten
gains and the meanness of the people around him is asserted on:
The surprises and contrasts in our great country were simply
inexhaustible. Here was I in our capital city, reading about pails of
excrement from the cosy comfort of a princely seven bathroom mansion
with its seven gleaming, silent action, water closets! (AMP 48)
When he realizes Obili’s determination to contest his seat, Nanga’s first attempts
to offer a scholarship fails, so he arranges for the young man to be beaten up. He orders
the village of Urua’s water pipes to be removed as a punishment for supporting Odili’s
candidature.
Chief Nanga’s tiny manifestation is the wide spread corruption that plagues
Nigeria, when a lawyer finds it difficult to install a telephone in his home, because he is
not prepared to offer a bribe. The full horror of an African election, including
victimization of the parties, bribery, violence and exploitation of the mass media are
brought out in the novel.
One of the weaknesses of the novel is that the evidence of corruption is stated
than demonstrated. The Chief’s corruption is apparent and more effective to see chief
Nanga making the offer of the scholarship. Nanga rebukes Odili shortly afterwards:
‘Look at him. He doesn’t even know what is happening; our great
politician! You stay in the bush here wasting your time and your friends
are busy putting their money in the bank in Bori. Anyway you are not a
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small boy. I have done my best and, God so good; your father is my living
witness. Take your money and take your scholarship to go and learn more
book (AMP 135).
Chief Nanga appears at his worst because his own words condemn him. When he
addresses the political rally and abuses Odili, we see him in action, which is
demonstrated rather than reported.
Achebe gives the impression that the Chief Nanga and his kind result from the
ignorance, cynicism and indifferences of the people. Odili’s father looks at politics as a
lucrative profession, one of the village elders is even more sneering:
The village of Anata has already eaten, now they must make way for us to
reach the plate. No man in Urua will give his paper to a stranger when his
own son needs it; if the very herb we go to seek in the forest now grows at
our very back yard are we not saved the journey. We are ignorant people
and we are like children. But I want to tell our son one thing: he already
knows where to go and what to say when he gets there; he should tell them
that we are waiting here like a baby cutting his first tooth: anyone who
wants to look at our new tooth should know that his bag should be heavy
(AMP144).
A Man of the People is caught between the world’s imagination and its exposure to
corruption in Nigerian society. The novel is humorous and witty. It seems to be a structured
artistic weakness. The narrator – hero lapses into depression. It indicates the hollowness of
Odili’s mind. He narrates his own story and recollects things, and he relates it to its
occurrence. Achebe gives the impression of the talking voice, tell its own story.
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A Man of the People – A Parable of Africa
Odili and Chief Nanga are the two characters come to life, the former because of
Achebe’s irony and the latter, a representative in a Nigerian politics. The novel looks
like a tract with the preoccupation of the exposure of the evils in the country’s political
system. The political intention is always flashy in the last sections of novel; here Achebe
is more a journalist than a novelist. The chief Nanga ends on the rubbish heap, Odili did
not deserve better, Nanga represents one end of the political spectrum - the aim is
survival. Nanga had a genuine sympathy and a rapport with the people. He is sensitive to
the demands of his people and represents government of the people, by the people, for
the people. A rare and accidental irony saturates the novel.
In No Longer at Ease Obi represents the educated class of the new Nigeria and
symbolizes the morality brought to the nation in 1960. The novel draws a neo-colonial
situation prevailing in the country after the formal independence. A Man of the People’s
publication within a month of the Nigerian coup made the readers suspect whether
Achebe had predicted the action at the end. Achebe was inspired by the electoral
campaign, miserable and corrupt. He responded to political malaise. The novel was
completed at least two years before 1966. The indication is how politics develops in
Nigeria. This establishes the novel’s relationship to his historical events and to his
purpose. Achebe has intentionally given a significant feature to the novel in the Nigerian
context and has widened the purpose to become a “Parable of Africa”
According to Bernth:
The novel no doubt is intended as a political parable, not as a prophecy. It
has as its central character a corrupt politician who had elbowed his way
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into prominence and power. But M.A. Nanga, one of the finest rogues in
African fiction, is only a symptom of sick postcolonial African society.
Although A Man of People is a comedy and ends happily with Nanga
removal from government, it has remained, like Achebe’s other novels, a
disturbingly pessimistic work. While censuring Africa for allowing it to be
corrupted by forces from within and without, Achebe again indicts Europe
for contributing to the moral confusion and political chaos that beset
independent African states.
Alienation between the Individual and Society
It is important to remember that the corrupt practices which took place in No
Longer at Ease owe the origin to alienation between the individual and society. A Man of
the People has its processes of deterioration when a new African government takes over
the power. The dissociation of individual and social values makes the hybrid Obi
Okonkwo who is no longer at ease in the old dispensation and is equally uncommitted to
the new. In the new culture, Obi betrays himself violating the codes of morality in both
old and new, with neither substance nor spirit. The passivity as a central character
prefigures the stormy conflict of A Man of People.
The apocalyptic of A Man of the People was fulfilled in January 1966, the month
it was published. Achebe can foresee the betrayals and conflicts of civil war and the
brutalities proceeding from it. The doers are not the famous men of the white skin. The
white men had been the plunderers under slavery and colorization. The violence has
turned inwards to a new and inchoate nation as a sign of the changing facets of history
and human relations. Here, Achebe looks at the immediate modalities of time, place,
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perennial realities and human condition. This gives his novel its enduring quality and
universal appeal.
The Conflict of Values
A Man of the People records the progressive disintegration of old values under the
pressure of foreign, social and political values imbibed. It is about the conflict of values.
The Igbo are the most westernized of all the major tribes in West Africa. Obi says
towards the end, after his fall “We all have to stand on the earth itself and go with her at
her place” (NLE 188). This philosophical statement of Obi is also Achebe’s acceptance
of the inevitable change and suggests that “Modernity” can be equated with “Progress”.
In A Man of the People Achebe is exploring a new situation in modern African
state which is different from its traditional past. The independent Nigeria confronting a
new administration is seen. It is not a journey into the traditional past but explores the
need to “decolonize” it. Achebe’s Things Fall Apart is an attempt to reconstruct a term
with African Identity.
The predicament of Obi reflects the universal theme of misunderstanding between
generations and cultural dislocation. Obi, Nanga and Odili are men of “this age”. Power
has fascinated and corrupted persons like Nanga all over the world. Nanga is
monstrously greedy and Odili is fickle and has failed to be proof against e corruption
A Man of the People is more a topical exposition and a historical record. It has
recorded how a corrupt society ruins not only the nation also its men. The relevance of
the novel has not only made it parable for Nigeria but to other modern African states.
Achebe’s novels are social documents, rich in sociological and anthropological content.
He does not dominate the human condition. The novels depict the traditional society of
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the translation period. Achebe in his modern novel speaks for himself and his place and
his times. A Man of the People has topicality and transcended the local and the
particular. Achebe’s vision encompasses a wider world and a community of races with
the all times universalizing imagination.
A Man of the People and No Longer at Ease reflect the attitudes of modern
African society:
We are proud to be Africans. Our true leaders are not those intoxicated
with their Oxford, Cambridge or Harvard, degrees, but those who speak
the language of the people. Away with the damnable and expensive
university education which only alienates an African from his rich and
ancient culture and puts him above his people (Weinstock 1).
The two novels depicting modern society, No Longer at Ease and A Man of the
People, reveal the anarchic effects of unbridled corruption. The tragedy of change in
African society as Achebe sees it derives the total bias against African culture held by
the ethnocentric colonizers and fostered in the new Africans who succeeded. Obi
Okonkwo and M.A Nanga are alienated from the meaningful elements of traditional
culture or infinitely complex obligations in a modern nation state.
Obi’s missionary upbringing and Western education have denied him the
knowledge of the esoteric language of the African masks. He pretends to have the
necessary and superficial knowledge and hence lacks loyalty to traditional lore or
etiquette which leaves him without a moral code. M.A Nanga, the embodiment of selfish
hypocrisy and ruthless violence in the present day politics, has no place for the mask as
artifact of culture and tradition. He wears the universal mask of dissimulation to exploit
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his own people. He travesties the best aspirations of his people he represents, but also the
intentions of the originators of the new system of government. While little boys of his
village are busy with the tame mask, he is busy in selling off national concerns to the
bidders who offer the biggest bribes. The excesses and the insensitivity of such men of
power lead to anarchy and ruin.
The somber note in A Man of the People is akin to the general mood of the works
of Achebe's countryman Wole Soyinka. African locale and Soyinka's philosophical views
are expressed in terms of his own indigenous Yoruba cosmology. His themes of
civilization, history and culture are designed to reflect the common concerns and the
universal themes applied to all humanity.
According to Bernth:
The novel, no doubt, is intended as a political parable, not as a prophecy.
Although A Man of the People is a comedy and ends happily with Nanga's
removal from government, it has remained, like Achebe's other novels a
disturbingly pessimistic work. While censuring Africa for allowing it to be
corrupted by forces from within and without, Achebe again indicts Europe
for contributing to the moral confusion and political chaos that beset
independent African states.
The Sordid Game of the Politics of Power
A Man of the People depicts the sordid game of the politics of power in a
decolonized and under-developed country. Operating under the facade of a democratic
structure, chief Nanga is an accomplished impostor who sedulously built up his image as
a man of the people. Absolute power corrupts chief Nanga absolutely. Achebe analyses
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the psychological truth about the black politicians in a newly independent country
through the typical character of Nanga “who was born politician; he would get away
with almost anything he said or did. And as long as men are swayed by their hearts and
stomachs and not their heads, the chief Nangas of the world will continue to get away
with anything”(AMP 67).And “The mainspring of political action was personal gain”
(114).
Odili observes:
How can one expect a flourishing politician to sacrifice anything for a
little matter of principle? It is foolish to think that a sensible man would
spit out the juicy morsel that good fortune placed in his mouth” (AMP 7).
We ignore man’s basic nature if we say, as some critics do, that because a
man like Nanga has risen overnight from poverty and insignificance to his
present opulence he could be persuaded without much trouble to give it
up again and return to his original state (AMP 39).
The Blind Imposing of Parliamentary Structure
Within a few years of its independence, Nigeria under black hegemony turns into
a cesspool of corruption and misrule. The novel is a bitter and disillusioned study of this
“fat-dripping, gummy, eat-and-let-eat-regime” (AMP 151). It questions the wisdom and
appropriateness of blindly imposing a Western parliamentary structure with universal
franchise and electioneering on the indigent and unwary masses without an understanding
of the indigenous ethos: the use of money and muscle power to tempt or threaten the
opposition candidates either to withdraw their nomination papers or stand down from
contest, the misuse of Government machinery and mass media in favor of the ruling party
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candidate, election-eve stunts of launching public welfare schemes and projects, grant of
multi-million dollar contracts to money barons, and the acceptance of massive financial
aid from foreign sources jeopardizing the security and freedom of the nation. Elections
are thus blatantly rigged; courts are manipulated by politicians in power who in turn are
manipulated and corrupted by foreign interests. Chief Nanga eventually wins the
elections by adopting all such unscrupulous means, but in the wake of widespread
violence and anarchism, the military stages a coup and seizes power.
Need for New Resurgent Awareness and Fine Courage
In the murky climate of greed, violence and chicanery among the politicians
lusting after women, cars and landed property, the character of Max in the novel rays out
a new resurgent awareness. Max is an intellectual activist of the People’s Convention
committed to the exposing of the scandalous deals and corruption in high places, and the
arousing of a sense of self dignity in the people to fight against the unjust establishment.
He opposes the murder and rape of Africa by whites and blacks alike. Max is killed in a
jeep accident engineered by chief Koka’s hoodlums. He is hailed as the hero of the
revolution by the coup leaders at the end.
Obi lacks the fine courage of Okonkwo and Ezeulu although he has his own
integrity. His weakness prevents the cataclysm the older heroes faced, for they were
stronger and their disasters more shattering. In this novel Achebe makes the assertion of
corrupt society that sustains his A Man of the People. The people have never been
worthy of their heroes. But before that there was a novel in the great heroic mould of
Things Fall Apart, and Arrow of God.
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Achebe in A Man of the People portrays the nature of corruption in Nigeria –
politics in army, in civilian life, in the whole of rural and urban environment. He seems
to be cynical about the Nigerian society.
As observed by Donald Weinstocks:
If Odili's story indicates anything, it would seem to be that the
amalgamation of British and Nigerian modes of life has effected no more
than the description of the best in both cultures…. and what is doubly
disturbing, the Africans, by partaking of the European experience (for
nearly a century now) have put on all of the contemporary spiritual
problems of Western man as well(11).
Achebe in his novels intentionally draws white characters as flat characters, for
they do not represent any people, they symbolically stand for an alien culture, to which
the central characters respond. In No Longer at Ease Mr. Green, Obi’s boss, is a dull
representative of the old colonial system. Captain Winterbottom the District
Commissioner in Arrow of God is a foil to the ambitious Chief priest who demonstrates
his authority on Umuaro. In A Man of the People the American couple interested in
"things" African, representing new generation. Achebe has deliberately made his white
characters just phantoms playing insignificant roles in the history of their province.
Chinua Achebe's novels’ Things Fall Apart, and A Man of the People emphasis
on the aspect individual versus society not only predict the individual in revolt against the
society but show how the individual in revolt against the society cease to exist as two
real entities with the pre-colonial situation to the post – colonial situation. A Man of the
People depicts the post-colonial situation in a modern African state which tires with the
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traditional past. In this novel, Achebe exposes the inadequacies in a society in losing its
traditional moorings and also opportunistic tendencies of the local, newly emerging
politicians. Achebe takes a strong satirical stand to show how the local traditions and
customs are exploited by politicians to meet their selfish needs. Achebe is dealing with a
country that has entered the age of the isolated individual confronting a mechanical
administration.
The novel is unfolded from the point of view of Odili Samalu who hates politics
but opts for politics in the end. Chief Nanga, ironically called "man of the people" as
Browne is popularly referred to in V.S.Naipaul's The Mimic Men, does nothing but
exploit the people. In the post colonial situation, there is a radical transformation in the
entire scenario, a tilt in the balance with the new politicians taking over political power;
corruption and self-interest creeping in. The colonial politician who is elected
establishes order in creating nothing but disorder. People have allowed politics to be
westernized only to the extent of learning to serve. The concept of "people" or society as
an organic community has receded, with the individual becoming an abstract entity. The
novel seems to suggest that there are limits beyond the communal that cannot operate
meaning fully.
Achebe's satirical powers are best when he sums up the selfish attitude of the
public as:
‘Let them eat’, was the people's opinion, ‘After all when white men used
to do all the eating did we commit suicide? Of course not and where is the
all-powerful white man today? He came, he ate and he went. But we are
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still around, the important thing then is to stay alive … if you survive, who
knows? It may be your turn to eat tomorrow. (AMP 164)
From this we can notice that survival of the fittest seems to be the popular motto,
with each one waiting for his chance to plunder. The irony actually is turned against
people like Nanga, and also ‘high-minded’ people like Odili, the small opportunist goes
into politics to pay off a grudge. Achebe presents the conflicts between the individual
and the society and its consequences in tradition and modernity. He succeeds in
exposing the good and evil in the African culture and an alien culture.
Thematically Achebe's A Man of the People completes itself a development.
Achebe in his Things Fall Apart traces the European impact on African society. Achebe
not only presents the contemporary socio-cultural problems but also probes into the
whence of the present and follows up these problems to their roots. Though spatially
Achebe's stories are set in Nigerian society, the depiction is so close to truth that it
moves from the particular to embrace the general and the local scene. It can be extended
to demonstrate what has been happening all over the ex-colonial world. This lays the
triumph of Achebe's historical method.
Achebe's portrayal of his protagonists adds an extra dimension of reality to his
narratives. Achebe's protagonists embody the spirit of the age to which they belong.
While the traditional heroes of Achebe personify the essential virtues of African
character, his modern men Obi and Odili display fragmented schizophrenic personalities
which undoubtedly are the products of colonial education. Achebe after making his
protagonists quintessential of their class, carefully individualizes them to their smallest
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human peculiarities. He endows them with certain personal traits that distinguish them
from the other members of their class.
For instance, in a society based on group allegiance, Okonkwo and Ezeulu stand
out with their individualistic temperament. In the corrupt world of Lagos, Obi stands in
the predicament of being an idealist sans strength of will. Odili, of course, cast in a
satiric mould is more a type than an individual. Achebe's characters exhibit an excellent
combination of the typical and individual traits. Being typical they remain true to their
times and being individual they emerge as convincing characters.
Furthermore, the lives of these men exemplify the essential, social, cultural and
psychological conflicts of their respective times. Their fates are largely determined by
the historical changes of the time. In fact their characters develop through their
responses to these changes.
On the other hand, in No Longer at Ease, and A Man of People, where the action
takes place in urban and modern Africa, the language used is westernized, marked with
conventional English idiom and linguistic habits like contractions. The similes used are
drawn from science and other spheres of urban experience. In No Longer at Ease, the
educated characters use a strange mixture of Standard English and Pidgin. This
linguistic confusion is symbolic of the moral and cultural confusion prevalent in the
society. In A Man of People Odili uses a highly affected language with superfluous
images and clichés. It is thickly sprinkled with idiomatic expressions imported from the
West. Odili's language betrays not only the speaker's striving after effect, but also his
eagerness to imitate the West
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Nigerian society was evolving into modernity and this confronts Obi Okonkwo.
He is torn apart in his desire to follow the path of his fore fathers and at the same time,
he seeks his own path and risks his whole future and position. He seeks to overcome the
enslavement of custom and the boredom of tradition. The only way to survive is a
certain amount of mixing in the positive regard. Obi-Okonkwo is a hybrid of two
cultures, the African and the European. The Europeans could not understand how
someone who had the privilege of a western education did not follow the rules of
conduct he had imbibed.
Adaptability
His decline is the fact that his native idealism prevents from adjusting to the
corrupt society. Obi's valorization of honesty and integrity represents an aspiration of all
cultures. The society to which he belongs manages to survive because of its adaptability.
The process of adaptation is slow and painful. The conflict between the desire to retain
traditional values and the recognition the change and assimilation are absolutely
necessary for survival. The novels respond to rootlessness and alienation in one's
homeland to colonialism, corruption and oppression that follows the new found
independence. This is a universally accepted fact.
The vital issue, according to Achebe, is the frozen, almost petrified,
consciousness of the masses who resign themselves unthinkingly to the appalling
conditions of oppression and squalor. Basically this question concerns the restoration of
self-pride to the nation. This is inter-linked with the twin tasks of eliminating the scourge
of poverty and heightening the spiritual and aesthetic quality of life. The need, therefore,
is, first, to identify the positive potential in the native tradition and eschew its negative
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and regressive features, and, second, to absorb the benefits of modern knowledge in the
areas of science, technology and the humanities integrating them with the healthy ethos
of the nation. The process of regeneration would counter a servile imitation of the
imperialist culture marked by acquisitive values and an insane greed for the accumulation
of material goods.
In Achebe’s fictional rhetoric portraying the social dynamics, cerebral attitudes,
divorced from the emotional springs of life, represent dissociated sensibility. The cult of
the alienated artist is foreign to the genius of Africa. The artist is not a special breed or
an exclusive category but a commoner whose main province is man’s everyday concerns
and activities. Art is seen as a spontaneous manifestation of its organic connection with
community life and work. There is no barrier between the makers of culture and its
consumers. The ceremony of Mbari, for instance, is an affirmation of the people’s belief
in the indivisibility of art and society. The gusto and joy of life expressed the creative
zest and vigor of man, earth and nature.
Similarly, the socio-political institution of market assembly is a form of village
democracy suited to the genius of the people. A fierce egalitarianism is a marked feature
of Igbo political organization. The evolution of a decentralized polity is a more
appropriated and effective form of governance than the transplantation of the
Westminster model. This structure would maintain the unity and integrity of the nation
while preserving a healthy diversity of cultural patterns. Similarly, given a proper
orientation and emphasis, the Oracle, the ancestral spirits and the concepts of Chi and
Osu would create the affirmative and life-enhancing values of the individual and the
community.
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The spiritual and the secular in Africa are thus not exclusive categories. They are
organically connected to animate and energies each other. Achebe’s projections,
profoundly concerned as they are with the basic issues of the changing Nigerian identity
during the pre-and post-independence phases, are also in a vital sense typical of the
factors and forces operating in the emergent nations of Africa, Asia and other third
world countries.
The single most important event in the second half of the twentieth century was
the rise of the individual nation-states. While the freedom struggle against colonial rule
galvanized and united the people, the scramble for power in the wake of independence
released divisive and disruptive forces. The failure of leadership to give an economic
content to freedom manifested itself in out of control corruption at one end and widespread poverty at the other. The culture of affluence indulged in by the ruling class
broke its rapport with the needs and aspirations of the people. The transplantation of a
foreign political structure without an insight into the historical roots of native social and
cultural habits reduced ‘democracy’ and ‘socialism’ to mere catch-words without
substance.
Achebe underlines the need on the part of the thinkers, writers and statesmen to
reinterpret the values authentic to society and show that they are not fixed and static but
have the resilience and creative flexibility to respond positively to the demands of the
contemporary world. It is in the reconstruction of a new socio-cultural identity that an
organic growth is possible capable of synthesizing the vital features of the native tradition
with the benefits of modern knowledge.
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