NO LONGER AT EASE
No Longer at Ease
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
No Longer at Ease is a 1960 novel by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe. It is the story of an Igbo (also spelled Ibo) man, Obi Okonkwo, who leaves his village for a British education and a job in the Nigerian colonial civil service, but who struggles to adapt to a Western lifestyle and ends up taking a bribe. The novel is the sequel to Achebe 's Things Fall Apart, which concerned the struggle of Obi Okonkwo 's grandfather Okonkwo against the changes brought by the English.
Novel 's title
The book 's title comes from the closing lines of T. S. Eliot 's poem, The Journey of the Magi:
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
Plot summary
The novel opens with the trial of Obi Okonkwo on a charge of accepting a bribe. It then jumps back in time to a point before his departure for England and works its way forward to describe how Obi ended up on trial.
The members of the Umuofia Progressive Union (UPU), a group of Ibo men who have left their villages to live in major Nigerian cities, have taken up a collection to send Obi to England to study law, in the hope that he will return to help his people navigate British colonial society. But once there, Obi switches his major to English and meets Clara Okeke for the first time during a dance.
Obi returns to Nigeria after four years of studies and lives in Lagos with his friend Joseph. He takes a job with the Scholarship Board and is almost immediately offered a bribe by a man who is trying to obtain a scholarship for his little sister. When Obi indignantly rejects the offer, he is visited by the girl herself who implies that she will bribe him with sexual favors for the scholarship, another offer Obi rejects.
At the same time, Obi is developing a romantic relationship with Clara Okeke, a Nigerian woman who eventually reveals that she
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
No Longer at Ease is a 1960 novel by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe. It is the story of an Igbo (also spelled Ibo) man, Obi Okonkwo, who leaves his village for a British education and a job in the Nigerian colonial civil service, but who struggles to adapt to a Western lifestyle and ends up taking a bribe. The novel is the sequel to Achebe 's Things Fall Apart, which concerned the struggle of Obi Okonkwo 's grandfather Okonkwo against the changes brought by the English.
Novel 's title
The book 's title comes from the closing lines of T. S. Eliot 's poem, The Journey of the Magi:
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
Plot summary
The novel opens with the trial of Obi Okonkwo on a charge of accepting a bribe. It then jumps back in time to a point before his departure for England and works its way forward to describe how Obi ended up on trial.
The members of the Umuofia Progressive Union (UPU), a group of Ibo men who have left their villages to live in major Nigerian cities, have taken up a collection to send Obi to England to study law, in the hope that he will return to help his people navigate British colonial society. But once there, Obi switches his major to English and meets Clara Okeke for the first time during a dance.
Obi returns to Nigeria after four years of studies and lives in Lagos with his friend Joseph. He takes a job with the Scholarship Board and is almost immediately offered a bribe by a man who is trying to obtain a scholarship for his little sister. When Obi indignantly rejects the offer, he is visited by the girl herself who implies that she will bribe him with sexual favors for the scholarship, another offer Obi rejects.
At the same time, Obi is developing a romantic relationship with Clara Okeke, a Nigerian woman who eventually reveals that she
References: ^ Rogers, Philip (1983). ""No Longer at Ease": Chinua Achebe 's "Heart of Whiteness"". Research in African Literatures 14 (2): 165. Retrieved 25 November 2013. ^ Mackay, Mercedes (October 1961). "No Longer At Ease by Chinua Achebe". African Affairs 60 (241): 549–550. ^ Lerner, Arthur (Summer 1961). "No Longer at Ease by Chinua Achebe". Books Abroad 35 (3): 233. ^ Mkapa, Ben (January 1962). "No Longer at Ease by Chinua Achebe". Transition (3): 36.