Shadow of Death, and the Pastische that is Obi Okonkwo: A Reevaluation of Achebe’s No Longer at Ease

Abstract

Chinua Achebe’s No Longer at Ease perfectly captures the ongoing plight of a colonized nation that is going through massive transitions. Though the character of Obi, Achebe sets out to map the future that Nigeria is headed towards which is dialectically interlocked with the past it has experienced. Extensive work has been done to carve out the literary parallels to and allusions mentioned in the novel. In this article I would like to argue how the character of Obi and his spiritual death allegorizes the fragmentation of the nation as a whole; how his fragmentation also stems from language, both Igbo and English, through which Obi fails to coherently express himself; furthermore, this paper would also try to establish religion's link to the same fragmentation. This article also points to a lacuna which will, hopefully, be filled and takes the research available in this area further.