Forms Of Encounter On The Colonial Contact Zone In Chinua Achebe’s No Longer At Ease

Achebe’s No Longer at Ease deals with some crucial postcolonial issues in Nigeria. In addition to exploiting the natives’ lands, physical force, and raw materials, the colonizer tries, using all means available, to impose his “superior, civilized” culture on the people’s lives. The result of such a strategy is a cultural and an intellectual ambiguity in which the Nigerian society lives in. Living in between two clashing cultures is an unease that both old and young Nigerians suffer from. The Nigerian intellectual is confused between his Western education and his society’s rigid values and traditions. This article is an attempt to analyze the different ways of encounter between colonizer and colonized in Achebe’s novel. It also highlights the case of the Nigerian intellectuals who seem to be more aware of their country’s situation.