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Chapter 13
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in No Longer at Ease, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Corruption
Western Influence and Alienation
Language, Literature, and Communication
Prejudice and Discrimination
Summary
Analysis
Later that evening, Isaac finally confronts Obi about Obi’s desire to marry an osu, plainly declaring that the wedding cannot proceed. Isaac is shocked to discover that Obi already knew about her osu status and wanted to marry her anyway. Obi casually counters that they are Christians and are thus not bound by folk superstitions. Isaac resists this claim but finds himself going silent, which Obi counts as a small victory. He later thinks how this is the first real moment of connection he’s ever had with his father.
Obi cleverly manages to catch Isaac in a bind. The fact that Isaac, whose Christianity leads him to unapologetically dissent from his neighbors on almost every topic, still takes the osu prohibition so seriously shows the gravity of this custom. Obi’s feeling of connecting with Isaac for the first time here is a sad indicator of the distance in their relationship, which can apparently only be overcome through intellectual besting.
Themes
Early the next morning, Obi goes to see his mother, who relates her recent dream of being eaten by white termites. She interprets the dream as a premonition of Obi’s marriage to an osu. She prays that she dies before this marriage occurs—otherwise, she will kill herself, and her blood will be on Obi’s hands. Obi is shocked and withdraws to his room for the day to contemplate. He’s even more surprised at his evident detachment from his own emotions in this trying time. He cannot summon a heartfelt reaction.
Obi’s mother’s frightening dream and severe interpretation of it conjure dark spiritual and ancestral forces and compel Obi to confront them, puncturing his typical breezy indifference to tradition. In confronting these, however, Obi discovers that they truly have lost any hold on him; his alienation from tradition is total and complete.
Themes
Obi tells Isaac that he is heading back to Lagos early. Isaac then tells a story Obi has never heard. The story is about a curse Isaac’s father placed on Isaac when he was a boy. Isaac’s father apparently killed a boy his parents had taken in and raised, and Isaac’s father later killed himself. Isaac’s father cursed Isaac for his desire to embrace Christianity. Isaac concludes that he has thus suffered to become a Christian in a way Obi will never understand.
This shocking revelation references events in Achebe’s first novel, Things Fall Apart (1958), which followed Obi’s grandfather and to which No Longer at Ease is a kind of sequel. Hearing of Isaac’s traumatic childhood humbles Obi. It also points to cultural alienation and suffering as curses he has inherited from his father as a result of their shared rejection of traditional Igbo beliefs.
Themes
