Chinua Achebe's No Longer at Ease: The Conflict of Values in Post-colonial History of Nigeria
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31185/eduj.Vol48.Iss1.3002کلمات کلیدی:
: novel values conflict colonization, historyچکیده
As a reaction to the European dominance on the African continent, African novelists showed a nationalistic feeling in their novels, and this national awareness gave them the opportunity to present the contemporary African experience. In the region that was occupied by the British, Nigeria in particular, the novelists’ interest was to show the impacts of the settlement period on the peoples of that region. Chinua Achebe was one of the most prominent Nigerian novelists who dedicated their novels to represent the psychological, social and cultural conflicts that Africans experienced as a result of the European intrusion into African life. The events and scenes of his novels were taken more from the reality of African life than from the world of imagination. His No Longer at Ease provides a critique of post-independence Nigerian life and an assessment of what it inherited from the European settler. The events of the novel deal with an African young man and the crisis he experienced as a result of the conflict between the European intellectual culture that he acquired during his studies in England and what he inherited of tribal and family traditions and values. The novel reveals the protagonist's lack of the moral courage to face the pressures of the conflict between the European materialistic ideals and the African traditions, which leads to his failure and moral downfall. The novel thus becomes an invitation, on the level of values , for an assessment of the behavior of the cultural elite that will take over the leadership of modern Nigeria and their ways to deal with the legacy of settlement.
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- David Carroll, Chinua Achebe (New York : Twayne Publications, Inc 1970),p. 22.
- Shato Arthur Gakwandi, The Novel and Contemporary Experience in Africa (London: Heinemann, 1977), P. 2
- Carroll, Op. Cit, p. 18.
- Ibid ,p.21.
-See Robert M. Wren, Achebe's World: The Historical and the Cultural Context of the Novels of Chinua Achebe,(Longman, 1981),p.39.
-For further discussion of this point see Wren,p.39.
-Quoted by Wren,p.40. About the manipulation of education in the novel, see Seyed Mohammed Mrarandi and Reyhane Sadat Shadpour, 'Education as an Ideological Instrument: A Postcolonial Reading of Chinua Achebe's No Longer at Ease', Middle-East Journal of Scientific Research, 12(7),Pp.938-944, 2012.
-Ibid, p. 41.
-About the definition of 'African Literature' see Chinua Achebe, Morning, Yet on Creation Day, New York: Anchor Press,1975,p.91.
-Quoted and translated by Gakwandi, p.1.
-Colin Legum, Pan-Africanism,London: Pall Mall Press, 1965.
-Edward Blyden, Christianity, Islam and The Negro Race, Edinburgh; University Press, 1967,p. 189.
- Claude Wauthier, The Literature and Thought Of Modern Africa, London: Pall Mall Press,1966,p.96.
-Victor Le Vine, Political Leadership in Africa, Stanford: University Press, 1967,p.54.
-For these historical details I am indebted to Carroll, Pp.25-30.
-Chinua Achebe, No Longer at Ease, London:Heinemann1962,p.2. All subsequent references will be to this edition and only page numbers will be parenthetically cited in the text.
-Gareth Griffiths, 'Language and Action in the novels of Chinua Achebe' in African Literature Today, (ed.) Eldred Durosimi Jones, London: Heinemann, 1982,p.92.
- Gakwandi, p.29. About the idea of the expectations and the disappointments that permeate the novel, see Amechi Akwanya, 'Chinua Achebe's No Longer at Ease: The question of Failed Expectations', African Journal of New Writings, Feb. 2006.
-Kofi Owusu,'The Politics of Interpretation: The Novels Of Chinua Achebe' in Modern Fiction Studies Vol.37,No.3 Autumn,1991,p.436.
-Abiola Irele, 'The Tragic Conflict in Achebe's Novels' in ULL Beier (ed.) Introduction to African Literature, London: Longman, 1967,p.173.
- Wren, p.38.
- Gakwandi, p.33.
-Onyemaechi Udumukwu, 'Achebe and the Negation of Independence' in Modern Fiction Studies Vol.37, No.3 Autumn 1991,p.472.See also Adina Campu,' Tradition Versus Modernity in Chinua Achebe's No Longer at Ease ',Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov,IV, Vol.6, No.2, 2013
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حق نشر 2022 Journal of Education College Wasit University
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