Last of the Chinua Achebe Posts

So, as I said previously, I'd forgotten that I was only going to read a couple of titles by the same author, especially if that author was rather prolific. But I am happy that I read A Man of the People: it gave me much to think about, not only about the politics of a newly-formed and newly-freed-from-white-colonialism Nigeria, but about the current political goings-on of my own country. It also helped me see the white, Western bias with which I've been reading some of Achebe's writing.

Por ejemplo, I've been complaining about Achebe's portrayal of women; but that was definitely my own white, Western bias judging a writer who was simply describing how women were treated in a rather patriarchal society. I found that Achebe's descriptions of women in A Man of the People which takes place in a much more modern-day Nigeria did not irk me as much. And, yet, the women were still treated as "girls" by the men of the story. I was allowing my own views on the status of women cloud my view and confuse the line between the voice of the author telling the story and the voice of the character in the story, so instead of the way women were treated in the different pieces being a product of the society in which they live, I saw their treatment as being designed (rather than described) by Achebe. This is similar to the current move to ban Muslim women from wearing hijab in France - Western values being placed on a different culture.

I guess, I'm getting ahead of myself. A Man of the People is the story of Odili Samalu, once a student of Chief M.A. Nanga, a member of the newly-formed, all Nigerian government cabinet. Odili is now a teacher himself, and after re-meeting Nanga, Odili goes to visit Nanga at his home in Bori. While there Odili plans to hook up with his girlfriend/fuck buddy, Elsie. Elsie comes to Nanga's house, and rather than Odili and Elsie getting together, Nanga goes to her and sleeps with her. This is when the story really gets good: Odili decides to get his revenge by sleeping with Nanga's second soon-to-be wife Edna. He also joins a newly-formed political party that plans to overthrow through the upcoming election the government (including Nanga).

5 For:

1) The book made me re-think judgments I had made about Achebe's other books that I'd read previously.

2) The book opened my eyes more successfully to my own white, Western bias.

3) I love a story involving an underdog political party working for a better country.

4) Odili stands firmly between the traditional country world of Nigeria and its modern post-colonial world. He seems at home in both.

5) I heard Achebe echoing many of my own sentiments about modern American politicians, and as such his writing doesn't seen to age. See the below quote describing Chief Nanga has a "born politician."

I don't really have anything against the novel, so I'm skipping the 5 Against section, and instead giving you some excerpts. Except I will say, it hurts how much Achebe's main characters must suffer.

Elsie was, and for that matter still is, the only girl I met and slept with the same day - in fact within an hour...She was one of those girls who send out loud cries in the heat of the thing. It happened again each time. But that first day it was rather funny because she kept calling: "Ralph darling." I remember wondering why Ralph. It was not until weeks later that I got to know that she was engaged to some daft fellow called Ralph, a medical student in Edinburgh. The funny part of it was that my next-door neighbour - an English Honours student and easily the most ruthless and unprincipled womanizer in the entire university campus - changed to calling me Ralph from that day. He was known to most students by his nickname, Irre, which was short for Irresponsible. His most celebrated conquest was a female undergraduate who had seemed so inaccessible that boys called her Unbreakable. Irre became interested in her and promised his friends to break her one day soon. Then one afternoon we saw her enter his rooms. Our hall began to buzz with excitement as word went round, and we stood in little groups all along the corridor, waiting. Half an hour or so later Irre came out glistening with sweat, closed the door quietly behind him and then held up a condom bloated with his disgusting seed. That was Irre for you - a real monster. I suppose I was somehow flattered by the notice a man of such prowess had taken of Elsie's cry. When I confided to him later that Ralph was the name of the girl's proper boy-friend he promptly changed to calling me Assistant Ralph or, if Elsie was around, simply. A.R. (24-5)

Chief Nanga was a born politician; he could get away with almost anything he said or did. And as long as men are swayed by their hearts and stomachs and not their heads the Chief Nangas of this world will continue to get away with anything. He had that rare gift of making people feel - even while he was saying harsh things to them - that there was not a drop of ill will in his entire frame. I remember the day he was telling his ministerial colleague over the telephone in my presence that he distrusted our young university people and that he would rather work with a European. I knew I was hearing terrible things but somehow I couldn't bring myself to take the man seriously. He had been so open and kind to me and not in the least distrustful. The greatest criticism a man like him seemed capable of evoking in our country was an indulgent: "Make you no min' am." (66)

I walked for hours, keeping to the well-lit streets. The dew settled on my head and helped to numb my feeling. Soon my nose began to run and as I hadn't brought a handkerchief I blew it into the roadside drain by closing each nostril in turn with my first finger. As dawn came my head began to clear a little and I saw Bori stirring. I met a night-soil man carrying his bucket of ordure on top of a battered felt hat drawn down to hood his upper face while his nose and mouth were masked with a piece of black cloth like a gangster. I saw beggars sleeping under the eaves of luxurious department stores and a lunatic sitting wide awake by the basket of garbage he called his possession. The first red buses running empty passed me and I watched the street lights go off finally around six. I drank in all these details with the early morning air. It was strange perhaps that a man who had so much on his mind should find time to pay attention to these small, inconsequential things; it was like the man in the proverb who was carrying the carcass of an elephant on his head and searching with his toes for a grasshopper. But that was how it happened. It seems that no thought - no matter how great - had the power to exclude all others. (72)

As a rule I don't like suffering to no purpose. Suffering should be creative, should give birth to something good and lovely. (105)

This last quote I think is the thesis of most everything that I've read by Achebe. Or possibly the reason why Achebe writes.