Tag Archives: Chinua Achebe

Bramwell Osula to lead discussion of No Longer at Ease on November 12

On Friday, November 12 at 12:00 in the Library Conference Room, Dr. Bramwell Osula will lead a discussion of No Longer at Ease, by Nigerian master writer Chinua Achebe. Please note that the meeting date has been changed from what was previously announced.

No Longer at Ease takes place during British colonial rule in Nigeria and tells the story of Obi Okonkwo, grandson of the protagonist of Achebe’s first novel, Things Fall Apart. After four years of university studies in England, Obi returns to Nigeria and finds he is “no longer at ease” in his homeland. The title of the novel comes from the closing lines of T. S. Eliot’s poem, The Journey of the Magi:

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

Dr. Osula is Assistant Professor of Leadership in the School of Global Leadership & Entrepreneurship. He first read Chinua Achebe’s works while attending boarding school in Nigeria and has known the author for many years. Among his professional interests are global leadership and cross-cultural analyses, giving him a unique perspective on Achebe’s work.

No Longer at Ease is only about 140 pages long and is very easy to read. The Library currently has three copies available for check-out. If there are no copies remaining when you come to the Library, please contact Harold Henkel at harohen@regent.edu. Even if you are able to read only part of the novel, you won’t want to miss this chance to discuss one of Africa’s greatest writers with Dr. Osula.

Coming Book Club Event:

Friday, December 17th: Life and Holiness, by Thomas Merton (guest moderator: Dr. Corné Bekker)

Collection Spotlight—Things Fall Apart

Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe
Reviewed by Harold Henkel, Associate Librarian

Things Fall Apart (1958) is a magnificent novel. Like all great writers, Chinua Achebe is at once compassionate and detached, and his story is both intensely local and universal. One of the great strengths of the novel is its refusal to do the reader’s work for him and interpret the events as they unfold. Achebe, in his strong, classical prose is the ideal artist described by Hamlet, “whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature.”

Achebe grew up in a devout Christian home, and it is not difficult to detect in Things Fall Apart the literary style and influence of the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, the Hymn Book, and Pilgrim’s Progress. Achebe is deeply respectful of his ancestral Ibo culture, but does not equivocate in post-modern fashion with regard to monstrous aspects of that culture, such as the throwing away of twins and the killing of Ikemefuna. Although no doubt disagreeable to some secular readers, Achebe beautifully conveys the way the Christian faith grew because it answered a longing in the hearts of reflective people such as Nwoye:

“It was not the mad logic of the Trinity that captivated him. He did not understand it. It was the poetry of the new religion, something felt in the marrow. The hymn about brothers who sat in darkness and in fear seemed to answer a vague and persistent question that haunted his young soul-the question of the twins crying in the bush and the question of Ikemefuna, who was killed. He felt a relief within as the hymn poured into his parched soul. The words of the hymn were like drops of frozen rain melting on the dry palate of the panting earth.”

Achebe’s depiction of the primitive church in Nigeria is entirely convincing. His father, Isaiah, was an early Ibo convert to Christianity, and doubtless many of the details of the Christian community in Things Fall Apart come from his reminiscences.

The principal value of the pre-Christian Ibo culture will be familiar to readers of Homer: honor. Like Homer’s Greeks, this culture emphasized nobility, courage, loyalty, and generosity. More skeptically, one might add to this list, the domination of women. Kwame Anthony Appiah, however, in his introduction to the Everyman’s Library edition, writes that the Ibo culture of Things Fall Apart was not characterized by domination of women, but “a balance between masculine and feminine that [Okonkwo] does not acknowledge in part because he is ashamed of his father who has failed to be a real man.” Appiah’s view seems to me especially apt because one of the principal dynamics of the book is the powerful, menacing Oedipal temper that drives the protagonist. Okonkwo loathes his father, and in the end, his hatred leads to his destruction.

As a western, Christian reader, it is tempting to assume that Achebe regards the end of Ibo independence and traditional culture as a small price to pay for the coming of Christianity. The novel’s title, however, taken from a line in Yeats’ poem The Second Coming, suggests that Achebe is ambivalent about the coming of the white man:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Things Fall Apart was followed in 1960 by No Longer at Ease, and in 1964 by Arrow of God. No Longer at Ease is the story of one of Okonkwo’s Anglicized grandsons, and Arrow of God takes place amongst the Ibo villages in the 1920s. Together, Things Fall Apart, No Longer at Ease, and Arrow of God are sometimes referred to as The African Trilogy.

On Tuesday, November 17, Bramwell Osula, professor of leadership in the School of GLE, will lead a discussion of Things Fall Apart in the Library. For information about this event, contact Harold Henkel at 352-4198 or harohen@regent.edu.

Bramwell Osula to lead discussion of Things Fall Apart on November 17

Igbo MaskWritten by Harold Henkel, Associate Librarian

On November 17, Dr. Bramwell Osula will lead a discussion of Things Fall Apart, by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe. The novel, first published in 1958, is recognized as one of the great African novels. The book is a powerful story about an Igbo warrior on the eve of British colonization and the establishment of Christian missions in the 1880s. Achebe’s father was among the first Igbo to become a Christian, and many of the details of the primitive church in Nigeria are no doubt based on his reminiscences.

Dr. Osula is Assistant Professor of leadership in the School of Global Leadership & Entrepreneurship. He first read Things Fall Apart while attending boarding school in Nigeria. Among his professional interests are global leadership and cross-cultural analyses, so he is a uniquely qualified guide to Achebe’s masterpiece.

If you possibly can fit the book into your schedule (it is only around 150 pages), don’t miss this unique opportunity to read one of the great world novels of the twentieth century. Both of the Library’s copies are currently checked out, but the book is available very inexpensively from Half.com.

Our discussion of Things Fall Apart will take place in the Library on November 17 at 12:00. For more information on this and other Library literature events, contact Harold Henkel at 352-4198 or harohen@regent.edu.