The Image of African Intellectuals and the Position of Education in Achebe’s No Longer at Ease

Abstract

Education serves as a constructing process of the society and the intellectuals stand as the constructors of this process. The intellectuals have both positive and negative impacts on social construction and deconstruction. However, it is mostly the political motivation that determines the role of education and intellectuals in society. No Longer at Ease, with its protagonist Obi Okonkwo who goes to England for his university study and returns to his motherland Nigeria after four years of education, presents the expectations and contributions of education and exemplifies the ineffective status of African intellectuals resulting from the policies of the imperialist powers. The deliberate representation of the Easterners and the Westerners, their attributed racial properties, and the apathy and misconduct of the African intellectuals are of great interest in the novel and accordingly in this paper. The conflicting image of the Easterner and the Westerner intellectuals are particularized and the unsimilar outputs of education for the conflicting sides are analyzed regarding the educated people of the East and the West. This study delves into background information, examines the influence of education on society implying the vanity of the African’s education, offers the significance and role of the intellectuals, and deals with the contradiction of the African ones by presenting a picture of society, particularly that of intellectuals.