Between No Longer at Ease and A Man of the People: problematizing the analytical methods

Abstract

This article interrogates those analytical approaches to Chinua Achebe’s No Longer at Ease and A Man of the People, which evaluate the worth of the texts based on assumptions, on one hand, and on the structures, on the other. The study posits that these kinds of analyses are insular and reductionist because they hinder the discovery of the potential hidden in the depths of the works. Using Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics depth semantics theory with its systematic and rigorous methodology of explanation and interpretation of poetic metaphor in the text, the texts’ structures and references are explained and the existential issues they raise exposed.