No Longer At Ease VII
Obi Okonkwo, the young protagonist, is indeed a very interesting character; a character one can certainly not expect from a non-native-English speaker - English is not his mother language. Yet Obi is capable of arousing the Aristotelian pity and fear just like a tragic hero. He travelled to be educated outside his country- as if it is not already enough for him to be raised by a convert/catechist father and be colonized for a long period by the English atmosphere - in England, in order to be granted the high position in his indigenous society as the one granted to the outsider colonizers. The entire of his clan are so ambitious upon his return and after he received the post in the English committee. Tough there are numerous international portraits by famous authors of characters struggling within their own psychology between the good and the bad sides, Obi stands up among all of them - or at least that is what I think. One can easily relate to him, especially if one has been through a similar experience, because he is struggling between two opposites and cultures; two kinds of mindsets; the first is imposed by his people and their traditions and their own beliefs about how one should navigate his life and rise up to the elite; the second is the colonization mindset, which, I believe is either wrongly explained by the old colonizers, such as Mr. Green, or wrongly perceived by the indigenous people.
Then comes the relations Obi shares with the various kinds of people surrounding him. First, his relationship with his family, which is full of contradictions and lies. For example, he states, inner-mindedly, that he, though christian, doesn't believe in the God of his father, which could imply two meanings: he doesn't really believe in the God his father has converted his belief to, or he believes in his old ancestors God - traditional chi. Also, he says that he will marry his outcast beloved, Clara, despite of whatever the opinion of any one is, even his own mother with whom he shares a very special relationship, and, contradictorily, after that he declares that if he could convince his mother of the rationality of his choice then everything will be fine. Second, Obi seems to have two kinds of friends: the foreign educated Christopher, and the local educated Joseph. The two are clearly striking opposites. Both of them have different ideals. Christopher, though trying to seem carefree and open-minded, finds it useless for his girlfriend to travel to continue her studies, and at the same time, he declared it usual and OK to hook up with a girl simply because she voluntarily offered herself to a man. Joseph, on the other hand, cannot possibly accept whatever Obi suggests regarding his marriage to an outcast, and he even tells the "Umuofia Progressive Union" chairman about the whole matter, I guess out of fear that Obi might actually get married to such a girl. Joseph seems more, a man who is thinking radically but not behaving like one. Third, the relationship Obi shares with his beloved, Clara, is clearly full of struggles and oppositions unable of being cordially solved. Such a relation is a doomed one. Obi's insistence that he will marry Clara despite whatever circumstances that come up his way seems more of a sheer opposition to what is being said about the girl's ancestors rather than a deep love and mutual respect toward the outcast Clara. At last comes the very official and strict relation Obi shares with Mr. Green, his boss. Mr. Green is an old colonizer, and to Obi is just able to swear and shout. When Green came to Nigeria he didn't find what he expected; he didn't find the 'Heard of Darkness' of Conrad and that is what, supposedly, upsets him. Therefore, he resorts to humiliating the Africans, especially the educated one, claiming that no matter how high and elevated education you offer them, they will remain as bad and mindless as ever, simply because you can't possibly repair what is originally has been damaged for years; perhaps if you leave them for decades in the foreign atmosphere, their infected African genes will vanish and their descendants will be better than they were.
However, the way Obi abandons his ideals is striking though justified, in a narrative sense. He simply is extremely indebted that he cannot handle it anymore, in addition to his mother's death and Clara's abandonment. In fact, Obi, from the very beginning, possessed a kind of a 'double identity'. He declared bribes are evil and not possibly justified, yet he cheats on Clara with other girls. Perhaps he is sure of his decision regarding bribes and benefiting of his position in a twisted way, but he isn't really sure of the fate of his relation with Clara. Still Obi breaks down after a certain point, a point after which he can no longer be satisfied with his prior idealism. He starts taking bribes and repaying his debts, and still after the so called 'breaking-point' and the abandonment of his former beliefs, he is still never relieved - never at ease. The end of him is not, as obvious as it might look, indicated by the end of the novel; it is indeed indicated by his breaking point. The breaking point, after his mother's death and Clara's vanishment, is the beginning of the end for him. It is a smooth and delicate process in the fact that it is incorporated in the novel by means of necessity. We sympathise and identify with him simply because we could be in the same predicament as his own, unless we are in an actual one right now. Hence, the character of Obi and his surroundings cannot be truly justified in few words; it is a human life lived and experienced, and though it is written on paper, it feels as real as our own respective lives, if not even more real.
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