Chinua Achebe’s Engagement with City Life in No Longer at Ease and A Man of the People

Abstract

In spite of the encomiums often poured on Chinua Achebe for inventing the modern African novel, his orientation of resuscitating a sense of pride in Africa’s own cultural achievement tends to overshadow his interest in city life. This paper offers a study of Achebe’s engagement with city life through No Longer at Ease and A Man of the People and foregrounds his demonstrable concern about the problems plaguing the modern African city. The paper uses the Postcolonial approach which focuses on the destructive effects of colonialism on traditional values to critically examine Achebe’s literary rendering of city experience. It pays particular attention to what seems to be Achebe’s conclusion that what happens in the city are a brain child of colonisation and that urban pollution is a result of the invasion and destruction of African values by colonial experience. The parochial attitude of ethnic groups in the city often rob city dwellers of confidence of citizenship; hence, they tend to regard the city as an entity that creates or exacerbates their misery and generally stand in their way of achieving true happiness. This unhelpful attitude has negative implication for the reading public since people act from perception rather than reality.