Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work. The Corruptibility of Civil Servants At first I missed the powerful story of Things Fall Apart. By the end I realized that it could not be the same. The tragedy is the same: the loss of certainty and the surrender of old tribal values in an effort to mix with the White Man. But the times are so different that Obi mistakenly hopes his modern views and education will see him through.

Chinua Achebe has written a brilliant novel on the age old condition. However, when you add in the perspective of how the modernization (or colonization) of Nigeria has changed the past with the new, complicated by religion and race, then a whole other can of worms is opened. The heart of the matter leads to corruption. And that makes things very uneasy. Many a tines questions of education, privilege and power arose, and overall, I really liked how they were handled. Achebe shows the absurdity of who is allowed to raise in society and who is forcibly kept at the bottom. He asks himself: “What kind of democracy can exist side by side with so much corruption and ignorance?” There’s also romance. Obi falls in love with a young woman who believes she can’t marry him because she is from a traditional outcaste tribe, I gather, kind of like the ‘untouchables’ of India. His dying mother pleads against his marrying her and the dilemma tests his father’s religious beliefs. Torna, pertanto, con tanta teoria come ad esempio il credersi saldamente fermo sui principi morali che si oppongono alla corruzione dilagante del paese. The other theme, also quite fascinating, is linguistics. The different languages people speak; the degree of English they understand, and how they use varying degrees of proper English in varying contexts. Occasionally we get snippets of conversation to illustrate: “E go make plenty money there. Every student who wan’ go England go de see am for house.”

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Mentre nel primo libro il titolo si riferiva ad una poesia di Yeats (”The second coming”) in cui parlava della caduta del vecchio mondo rappresentato dal Cristianesimo, qui il riferimento è a T. S. Eliot

Achebe’s influence should go on and on . . . teaching and reminding that all humankind is one.” —T he Nation

A second theme throughout the story is the modernization of Nigeria and the transition away from tribal traditions. The main character, Obi, is Ibo but his father was a Christian minister who will not take part in traditional village customs honoring tribal gods. There’s a fascinating passage about these superstitions that I will simplify and paraphrase. A younger man (Y) is talking to an older traditional man (O) who tells the younger man: Chinua Achebe is gloriously gifted with the magic of an ebullient, generous, great talent.” —Nadine Gordimer Mr. Green's secretary, Marie, is kind to Obi. Marie often claims what a strange man Mr. Green is and, on other occasions, defends the same Mr. Green. She, like Mr. Green, represents the presence of the English in Nigeria. Sam Okoli The main character studied in England thanks to a scholarship that was paid from Nigeria. He was an impeccable person, who was not possible to bribe or do anything dishonest with him. However, once he ran out of money, his vision of things slowly changed due to thing I'm not going to mention to not spoil anything, but at the end the message intends that money is a super powerful weapon which we all need at least once in our lives. Some people more than others, but we need it. In a nutshell "Money doesn't mean happiness, but gosh it helps!".

The novel begins with the trial of Obi Okonkwo, who we find within this first chapter is accused of having taken a bribe. The courtroom is full and the case seems to be a very popular one—everyone in Lagos, Nigeria, has been talking about it and is going to witness it in court on his/her day off. Obi seems to be indifferent most of the time until tears come to his face when his "education" and his "promise" are mentioned. Achebe’s breaks the rules of novel craft and focuses instead on bringing out character and societal flaws, and therefore I found the style quirky in places and influenced, no doubt, by the oral tradition of his Igbo tribe. Obi comes across as impulsive and Clara can be jealous and cold. Achebe thinks it is more important to show a driver using his elbows to steer the car while lighting his cigarette than clearly and proportionately demarcating time and scene shifts in the novel. The local patois is hard to follow but lends authenticity to the dialogue. Poetry and song intrude into the narrative. Achebe’s political observations, which seem to be the prime motivation behind this trilogy, are quite astute: We are indebted to Achebe for reminding us that art has social and moral dimension—a truth often obscured.” — Chicago Tribune One of the most important aspects of Obi's life is that he was educated in England. This small fact molds the way others treat him and shapes what others expect of him. At the same time, the education he holds dear is also one for which he has felt guilt and one which has often made him a stranger in his own Nigeria.Everyone loves to joke about Nigerian scams and the daily corruption spread over third world countries. But why did this happen? This question is beautifully answered in No Longer at Ease. This is the story of Obi, a bright, idealistic young man who has returned to Nigeria after earning his college degree in London. He gets a civil service job as an administrator in the Education Department in the big city and capital, Lagos. Mostly his work involves giving out scholarships. I understand the story and the main message, which is how Nigeria was colonized and therefore contaminated by the Brits from the point of view of the administration and how clean or honest everything is done. Publisher Published in the United States by Random House through an arrangement with Reed Consumer books.

The inciting force on this Thursday is a delegation from Abazon—the northern province of Kangan devastated, like Nigeria’s own northern regions, by drought— that has come to the capital city of Bassa to seek relief. Ikem has only recently written an editorial, his allegorical “Hymn to the Sun” that dries up the savannah, accusing the president (the sun) of responsibility and promoting the delegation’s cause. Sam at first feels threatened by the loud demonstrations outside his office, but when he learns that the delegation consists of only six elders and that the rest of the demonstrators are Bassa locals, he decides to use the situation to rid himself of his old school buddies and to entrench himself in power surrounded by loyal henchmen such as Ossai. Achebe won several awards over the course of his writing career, including the Man Booker International Prize (2007) and the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize (2010). Additionally, he received honorary degrees from more than 30 universities around the world. Death The ship arrived at the Madeira Islands and anchored at sunset. Macmillan, Obi, and Clara went onshore together, walked around, and drank wine. Macmillan left to write letters and Obi and Clara passionately kissed. She said she would hate herself in the morning, but kissed him anyway. Chapter 4

Obi secures admission to study law in London, not a mean achievement for he is the first in his village Umuofia to achieve this. However, in Nigeria where money is meager, the means to fulfill this dream appear thin. This is when the villagers who stand by each-other in strong kinship come to the aid of Obi and tax themselves heavily to collect money for his education. Obi's mind was mostly on Clara, whom he had started dating and planned to marry. She was very secretive and he did not know why he was not able to tell people about them. Though set several decades after Things Fall Apart, No Longer at Ease continues many of the themes from Achebe's first novel. Here, the clash between European culture and traditional culture has become entrenched during the long period of colonial rule. Obi struggles to balance the demands of his family and village for monetary support while simultaneously keeping up with the materialism of Western culture. Furthermore, Achebe depicts a family continuity between Ogbuefi Okonkwo in Things Fall Apart and his grandson Obi Okonkwo in No Longer at Ease. Both men are confrontational, speak their minds, and have some self-destructive tendencies. However, this aggressive streak manifests itself in different ways. Where his grandfather was a man of action and violence, Obi is a man of words and thoughts to the exclusion of action. We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, At the end of the chapter, Ezeulu puts those realities into focus. He describes himself as an arrow of god whose very defense of religious forms threatens the survival of his religion, but he goes on to suggest the (for him) terrifying speculation that Oduche, his Christian son, and also Christianity and the whites themselves, are arrows of god. At the end of his career, Ezeulu is opening his mind to a wide range of possibilities. This tolerance, however, is double-edged, for, as Achebe seems to suggest, humanity must be not only receptive to unfamiliar conceptions but also tough enough to “tolerate” the pain of ambiguity and alienation. Ezeulu is too old and too exhausted to endure that pain. The final blow is his son’s death, which occurs while he is performing a ritual dance. Ezeulu interprets this as a sign that Ulu has deserted him.