Chinua Achebe

The nineteenth century marked a time where the race to colonize Africa was in full force. Portugal, Belgium, France, and Britain all scrambled to conjure up as much African land as possible. The resources were rich in Africa and with dwindling supply in their own lands, they raced to get as much of the wealth as possible. However it wasn't as easy as just moving in and taking the resources. There were already people who had lived there for thousands of years, the native Africans. So instead of trying to just take it and leave. They basically moved in. Took over the native economy, and began to change the way of life. The way it had been for years and years. The colonizers managed to work their way into the way of life of Africans. When people from the old country moved down to Africa and started running things, they saw these African people who had a very different way of life. The way things were run in Africa were not even close to the way things were run in Britain. This bothered the colonizers. They saw the Africans and their way of life far inferior to that of their own, perhaps even wrong. "The African is corrupt through and through" (Achebe 3). So, one of the first things they decided to do was change them. Change their religion, change their language, basically change everything that the Africans were and knew. This was not an easy task, many Africans were very resilient but some were open to the change. If one were to read about colonialism of Africa that was written by a man from England, they would walk away with the feeling that everything that the English did was right and just. They would look at colonization as a gift to the Africans, doing them a favor. But this is merely the standpoint that the colonizers had. It is the same biased viewpoint one gets if they watch a Japanese movie about Pearl Harbor. The films portray the kamikaze pilots as martyrs and heroes. This is not the same feeling one would get by watching an American Pearl Harbor film In the novel by Chinua Achebe, entitled No Longer at ease, the taking over of Africa by colonialists is told from the African side. It may be biased toward the African side, but it is nice to get a different view of what happened all those years. The book is a wonderful story about one man named Obi Okonkwo and his struggle with trying to fit in.

Obi Okonkwo is undoubtedly the protagonist in the book. Obi was born in Umuofia, a small village in eastern Nigeria. He grows up in the peak of African colonization. He loves his African roots but is quite intrigued by the ways of European culture. It bothers him profusely that his roots and raised way of life is looked at as inferior by all the Europeans that live in Africa. In a possible way out of being looked at as being inferior, he moves to England. Obi attends school there for about four years to study law. While he is there he learns and becomes part of the English culture. Things are very different from what he was used to, and perhaps in a way he sees why his original culture is looked as inferior from the culture he is now being a part of. However being in England and away from home for so long makes him weary and miss his African roots. "It was in England that Nigeria first became more than just a name to him. That was the first great thing that England did for him"(Achebe 14). When he finally returns home he is in a way, torn. Being away for so long made him rely on his memories of home to get him by. "but the Nigeria he returned to was in many ways different from the picture he had carried in his mind during those four years. There