No Longer at Ease by Chinua Achebe

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Chinua Achebe is one of the established author in Nigeria and all over the world at large. In this book, Achebe shows us how corruption has shaped the lives and behaviour of the Nigerian society from colonial era to present independence.
“No Longer at Ease” is a book that talks about corruption and the way it affects people. It even goes as far to talk about the traditional life, cultural behaviour and the activities of the Nigerian society. “Corruption”, is the swindling behaviour of virtuous people in the society and country at large.
The protagonist, Obi Okonkwo is a very intelligent and well brought up young man. He is from a Christian background. Due to his outstanding performance in school, he was offered a scholarship to study in England by the Umuofia Progressive Union of his state in Nigeria. Although Obi got the scholarship, he had to pay back the money on his completion of school and his return back from England. During his four years in England, he ended up dating a lady called Clara who was a nurse and also a Nigerian. Obi is someone who detests corruption and does not want to have anything to do with it. He works on the Scholarship Board of the Civil Service.
In my argument, I want to talk about how corruption is generally accepted by the Nigerian society and how it transformed Obi to be a part of such practice. For instance, when Obi was travelling back to his village from England for the first time, they were stopped by two policemen. Suddenly, the driver’s mate immediately got down and approached them with money to buy them off. There and then, Obi turned to look at them and the policeman felt so uncomfortable that he did not want to risk his life and so he refused to take the money from the...

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...nd everything laboured for started crumbling down. Everyone was amazed at Obi’s behaviour. He did not even follow his own theory about corruption.
In all this we learn that, in such a corrupted society, no matter how much you try to stay out of trouble, something will definitely push you to join such bad malpractice. This is because you are living in it and so no matter how hard you try you will find yourself doing one or two things in that direction. Corruption in such a society must be checked to prevent many innocent lives from getting involved in such bad practice.

Works Cited

Achebe, “No Longer at Ease”, 94-95, 109, 112, 114-115, 141, 180-181, 191, 193 Achebe, “No Longer at Ease”, 98-99 Achebe, “No Longer at Ease”, 34-35 Chinua Achebe, “No Longer at Ease”, (Anchor Canada, 2010, ©1960), 49-50.
Achebe, “No Longer at Ease”, 46

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