No Longer at Ease Themes

No Longer at Ease is a story about an idealistic young man, Obi, who enters the workforce full of optimism, a strong moral compass, and good intentions—only to gradually lose his ideals and compromise on his morals. “The African is corrupt through and through,” says Mr. Green, the White European employer of the novel’s Nigerian protagonist, Obi, at the start of the novel. But the novel immediately reveals Mr. Green’s racist generalization to…

No Longer at Ease takes place in 1950s Nigeria at a pivotal point in the nation’s history, as it edged closer to independence from British colonial rule. By the 1950s, cities like Lagos have become modern, westernized urban centers where young, formally educated Nigerians like Obi have more opportunities for upward social mobility than they would in Nigeria’s rural villages. But the novel shows that this opportunity for self-improvement is not without its costs, with…

Any novel that takes place in colonial Africa will inevitably have to deal with the racism at the heart of the colonial project, and No Longer at Ease is no exception. Obi’s boss at the Civil Service, Mr. Green, embodies the stereotypically paternalistic racism of the British Empire in that he sees Nigerian people as fundamentally inferior to White English people. As such, he considers colonial rule a necessity and is skeptical of…