Death of Native Cultures in Chinua Achebe’s No Longer at Ease

In his second novel, No Longer at Ease, Chinua Achebe deals with the society of Umuofia which have been under colonial rule, historically for quite some time now and the people have adapted to the new mode of life. The story of Obi Okonkwo is the story of a lot of young men in his country. His tragedy is the tragedy of that period in the history of Umuofia and Nigeria when the people had lost their traditional ways of life and with it the values that had bound them together. Obi is born into this society where the old values no longer proves useful and is therefore dead. He finds himself at the “cross-roads of culture. ”Achebe has brought in the picture of death to symbolize the death of a society that has been caught up in the dynamic world of change. The old order has certainly died making way for a new and transitional society, which is full of pitfalls, which the average man finds very difficult if not impossible to escape from. Yet this is the transitional stage of a society that has witnessed the dead of a decadent culture and the invasion of a powerful alien culture which is slowly assimilating itself into the ways of the Ibos. No Longer at Ease studies the deeply personal dilemma that modern tribal societies face as a result of rapid Westernization and the central character epitomizes the death of native cultures.