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No Longer At Ease

No Longer At Ease


by Chinua Achebe

Analysis: Writing Style

Plain, Straightforward

Achebe's writing style lacks frills, flowery-speech, and excessive metaphors or symbols. For example, in following passage, Achebe is straight-forward in his description of Obi's thought patterns:

Obi felt very sorry for her. She was obviously an intelligent girl who had set her mind, like so man other young Nigerians, on university education. And who could blame them? Certainly not Obi. It was rather sheer hypocrisy to ask if a scholarship was as important as all that or if university education was worth it. Every Nigerian knew the answer. It was yes (9.72).

In this passage, we are deep inside Obi's head, yet this brief explanation provides everything we need to know about why bribery and corruption was so wide-spread in Nigerian society: when corruption is the one path to get what you want, and when what you want is so lucrative, this kind of corruption will always be rampant.

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