No Longer At Ease

3520 Words15 Pages
Obi nkwo: an Igbo villager who through a community scholarship, given to him by the Umofia Progressive Union (UPU) is sent to England to attain the only hope of advancement in the colony, a European education. Upon his return, he settles into a senior government post which he eventually loses to corruption by an acceptance of bribery. After Obi is caught and is facing trial for bribery, The Umofia Progressive Union describes obi as “A man who runs after sweet things of Lagos.” This paper will therefore discuss the fairness of the above assessment of Obi’s character in relation to the predicament he finds himself in. The essay seeks to disagree with the Umofia Progressive Union and show evidence of the unfairness of the assessment. When Obi returns from England, one of the major problems that he encounters is his uneasy situation in the space between a diminishing colonialism and an emerging Nigerian nation. The major conflict of No Longer At Ease is the fact that Obi Okonkwo, the protagonist of the novel, is caught between two worlds: that of a traditional Africa and that of a changing and new world that lives amidst two cultures: the English and the African. Obi is caught in between his tradition and culture and the ways of the Whiteman who had colonized his homeland. Toward the end of a colonial reign; he is entrapped in the dialectic of difference and identity. Obi finds that he cannot completely dissociate himself from the colonial culture which he has inherited from his father, nor can he totally identify with the Igbo culture of his ancestors. Obi got into this conflict because of the education he has received in England. It is the higher education he has received that put Obi in a position where he is ′no longer at ease′. It is therefore his inability to fit in his own society that prompts him to isolate himself from his people, in his loneliness; he
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