The general orientation of the Nigerian novel—as opposed to such forms as the adventure and the heroic sequence we have been seeing—is towards novelty. The understanding, particularly in the novels whose situation is towards the end of the period of colonization, is that history is bringing out ever new forms which affect both the individual and society. The awareness of the implications of these changes for the social body is reflected in Achebe's No Longer at Ease, where there is also an attempt to react in an organized way. The people of Umuofia see the new dispensation under the colonists as holding advantages which they need to appropriate. They reason that only by having people loyal to their own cause in the higher echelons of the colonial administration or among the highly educated professionals may these advantages filter down to the common people. Since no one among the Umuofia has made it into such a position of influence, the people decide to sponsor some of their promising young people to study and qualify for influential positions and white-collar employment: Six or seven years ago Umuofians abroad had formed their Union with the aim of collecting money to send some of their brighter young men to study in England. They taxed themselves mercilessly. The first scholarship under the scheme was awarded to Obi Okonkwo five years ago.... Although they called it a scholarship it was to be repaid.... They wanted him to read law so that when he returned he would handle all their land cases against their neighbours. But when he got to England he read English (6). The union that the people of Umuofia have set up is a progressive union: it contains a gesture of identity with its past and with the geographical and cultural entity, the 'Ibo village in Eastern Nigeria' (4), as well as a gesture of involvement in the new dispensation under the colonists. According to old man Odogwu, 'Greatness is now in the things of the white man' (48). The Umuofia Union sees the new dispensation as a power system, and prepares through the scholarship scheme to participate in its processes, and if possible, take advantage of it. Obi Okonkwo is guided, however, by individual values, and one level of conflict in this novel is between his natural inclination to act for himself and follow his own lights and the demand of other people that he be a public figure and a hero. We see this, for example, when Obi attends the Umuofia Progressive Union meeting to show off his new car. The people simply conclude that their investment is beginning to yield dividends, and begin hinting at other kinds of dividends that they expect, especially finding employment for other members of the clan. The response of the president of the Union to the voicing out of this demand by a member is as follows: 'Your words are good,' said the President. 'We have the same thought in our minds. But we must give the young man time to look around first and know what is what.' The meeting assents to this. As to Obi, he feels very uneasy. 'But he knew they meant well. Perhaps it would not be too difficult to manage them' (72-73). But the demand of the collective is totalitarian. Not only does it overlook the individual's own personal needs and aspirations, because according to the president theirs is a generation of builders and they must be prepared to deny themselves much (75), it equally overlooks the significant impact of the unfolding new forms on the individual's consciousness. By contrast, it is forcefully presented in Ake, for example, that at this juncture where social and cultural transformation is taking place, changes are occurring in the very household environment. These changes affect the way the children are brought up, the things which they see around them, which become reference points and landmarks, so to speak, by which the diachronic history of consciousness becomes inscribed. We read of the following memorable change, for example: Workmen came into the house. They knocked lines of thin nails with narrow clasps into walls. The lines turned with corners and doorways and joined up with outside wires which were strung across poles. The presence of these workmen reminded me of another invasion. At the end of those earlier activities we no longer needed the oil-lamps, kerosene lanterns and candles, at least not within the house . . . Now the workmen were threading the walls again, we wondered what the new magic would produce. This time there was no bulb, no extra switches on the wall, instead a large wooden box was brought into the house and installed at the very top of the tallboy, displacing the old gramophone which now had to be content with one of the lower shelves of the same furniture (107). The arrival of the Rediffusion and therefore THE NEWS, and the way it affects and rearranges the habits of the adults of the neighbourhood is remarked here. This device is contemporary in the consciousness of the narrator, with the Second World War. Therefore, 'Hitler monopolized the box,' expanding the theatre of his war right into a household where the children's concerns are mainly with the injustice of the strong and swift corrections they receive for trivial infractions, and adult intellectual exercise had usually comprised theological debates. Wole's grandfather, however, sees the young as having to lead a kind of life which their elders never had to contend with, and this kind of life is defined by battles. He gives the young grandson a sense of what lies ahead: 'Now, here is Ayo, very ambitious for you. He wants to send his son into battle and believe me, the world of books is a battlefield, it is an even tougher battlefield than the ones we used to know. So how does he prepare him? By stuffing his head with books. But book-learning, and especially success in book-learning only creates other battles' (143). Fairness in these battles, the old man agrees, is by applying one's natural abilities, as well as the means of engagement available in the new situation itself. But his presumption is that few will fight fair, and he thinks his son naive to believe that natural abilities and the approved means of engagement will be sufficient. He takes for granted that others will bring along traditional and occult means of engagement, and now prepares to fortify his grandson against these. Henceforth success is measured in relation to the new situations that are unfolding. But there appears to be more than one approach to the issue, in one approach, the individual is fully aware of the new forms and ready to come to grips in order to help shape the outcome. In another approach, he actually avoids coming to grips and seeks to negotiate a relationship of live and let live. The struggle to shape events, as we have seen, is the dominant trend of the Nigerian novel. The negotiation, the trend in a minority of cases, reflects in the regime of training given to the young, whether to face up to the new world or away from it. In Onuora Nzekwu, the orientation is often squarely towards the traditional way of life, with the back as much as possible towards the new forms. For instance, in Nzekwu's Blade Among the Boys, there is universal welcome to the institutions which have arisen out of the encounter with the West, the school, the hospital, government and the public service, urban life, travel and even the Christian Church. But all these things are assigned a purely functional role by the people. We read, for instance, that having chosen Patrick Ikenga, a mere child, to serve as their okpala, the kinsmen agree to delegate his authority to his uncle, Ononye, so that Patrick's education may not suffer. They are convinced that in these days when education was the hallmark of a gentleman it would be a pity to withdraw him from school in order that he might rule over them. More important than these considerations was the fact that Patrick needed time to grow up and make the money with which to satisfy the conditions necessary for him to assume the office. He had to have a wife, build himself a house and, most important of all, take the ozo title. Without this title he would be barred from performing the sacred duties attached to that office—duties which in the eyes of the people, constituted the key to the responsibilities of the office (113). Apart from this education he needs as a gentleman, in the same way that he needs to come of age in order to take over his traditional duties, whatever else Patrick is doing is subordinated to that role assigned him by tradition. Everything is to be made to serve and promote that duty. His post as a goods handler in the railway in faraway Umuahia is really a source of money to meet all the requirements of his office as okpala, and before he assumes that office, to help and maintain family inheritance back in Ado. We read, Patrick had been spending rather heavily on his relations back home. And rightly too! For in the traditional social set-up, he occupied the most responsible post of okpala even though he had not assumed office... As okpala he had in trust for the lineage their religious emblems, landed property, farmlands and other valuables which they inherited from their ancestors. For years past people had been encroaching on the landed property and farmlands of the lineage. Litigation had followed litigation to decide on the ownership of the various property, and Native Court judges and court clerks had to he 'seen' to give a desired verdict. All this meant money and Patrick... had to dig deep into [his pocket] (151). Patrick finds that the only way to meet the financial obligations imposed by this ideology of lineage is through corrupt practice. He has no qualms in this, for it appears to be the shared assumption among the working classes that money making is the raison d'être of work and employment. An older colleague who notices that Patrick is rather wasteful offers advice to him as follows: 'Now you are making a lot of money and lavishing it as fast as it comes. The primary purpose of your leaving home to come here and work is to make enough money and retire, go home and put it to some good use' (127-128). The home village is the place to do something useful. Anywhere else, the place of work, the urban centre, the school, as we see elsewhere, even membership in the Christian Church, all these are processes and places of passage, where anything that may be put to account in the place of destination may be plucked and taken along. In the village is one's destination: traditional village life is where one finds one's true identity, where, as Heidegger says, one must settle one's existence (1949:289). Its demands are therefore paramount. Patrick is handicapped early by the death of his father, and so at eleven years of age, he is repatriated to the home village Ado, where he is under the care of his uncle Ononye. He finds the ceremonies, rituals, and festivals of Ado fascinating, and is learning fast, to the delight of Ononye, and the horror of his mother, a devout Christian, who is however, powerless when it comes to decisions concerning the upbringing of her son. We read that He was present at all sacrificial offerings to his ancestors. Watching them regularly, and without making any effort to learn, he soon knew which particular ancestor a piece of wood or carving represented. He knew the location of the various shrines to the deities of his patrilineal lineage, and the rituals used for worshipping at each shrine. He learnt what taboos were in force within the lineage; what rules governed priests, men, women and the various social classes; what purification rituals would apply to different offences; and the history of the town of Ado. Ononye was very pleased with the progress that he made but his mother was not (80).
This period he spends at Ado under Ononye's tutelage appears to have resulted in his internalizing the voice of tradition as Ononye's voice. Henceforth this voice will compete for domination of the field of consciousness with an older one ingrained while a child in Kafanchan, which speaks on behalf of the Catholic priesthood. Patrick's sojourn at Ado is brought to an end when he joins his uncle, also in the railway, and resumes contact with urban culture. This exposure to urban culture, together with his formal education, does affect his consciousness in a significant way. Even though he is much inclined towards the values of his people, he is no longer following as resistlessly as Ononye and his people would like. His brief sojourn in Lagos before he is given an appointment provides him an opportunity to see in perspective the life he has led so far, and the patterns of pressure or even coercion which have been used by the Christian missionaries and the cultural tradition on either hand to try and exercise control over him. Now he is harshly critical of the two systems laying claim upon him, the traditional and—perhaps with less justification than we can see from his experiences, the Christian. He explains himself to Nkiru: 'Yes, as I was saying, this whole conflict makes you grow into a timid prison, incapable of fearless decisions and actions, it colours your outlook until you move out of it into a neutral zone; in this case, Lagos'. There you suddenly realize that all the contradictory forces which kicked you around at Ado are no more. You relax from those enforced religious obligations to the Church and to the tribe. The fears they woke in you become things of the past. You realize for the first time how enjoyable it is to be free' (138). The result of education, travel, and exposure is that Patrick has developed an attitude which is outward looking. He stops but briefly to enjoy the free existence of the social world produced by direct colonial influence. He breaks away to try and serve the Christian world order as a priest. Going into the seminary for this purpose turns out to be a momentous decision. It drives bis mother into despair, and she is quickly to die broken-hearted. He is cursed and excommunicated by his kinsmen who hold him responsible for her death. But he is unable to accept this state of enmity with his people as a permanent fact; it seems so at variance with his aspirations for the priesthood. It is possible that he has taken his fantasies as the saviour of his people for Christianity too much to heart, and this is what has led him to keep trying to reconcile with them, when they have shown by every sign that they no longer want to have anything to do with him. These efforts at reconciliation bring him into renewed contact with Nkiru, who is prepared to use all means, including a love potion, to win him for herself. The day-dream world he has been building up collapses utterly. He has rejected the path mapped out for him by Ononye and the elders of his lineage, but he is not able to prosper along the one he has chosen for himself and is trudging alone. Many characters of the Nigerian novel of the late colonial period who find themselves isolated like Patrick between the traditional system and the new one which has come with colonization, or between their people's values and those of the outsider now in control tend to be dogged by failure. Examples are Obi Okonkwo of Achebe's No Longer at Ease, Habu of Alkali's The Stillborn, and Echewa's The Land's Lord's Philip. The protagonist of Okara's The Voice is an ambiguous case, while Nnanna-Kafo of Munonye's trilogy, The Only Son, Obi, and Bridge to a Wedding is the rare success story'. Autonomous self-construction seems impossible without institutions with which one closely identifies and simultaneously struggles against. The case is no different from that of a literary text which, according to Harold Bloom (1973), may achieve its authentic voice only under 'the anxiety of influence,' or according to Macherey (1979) by parody upon well respected predecessors. Patrick's particular predicament is that his wish to identify so closely with Christianity as to become its priest is in order to bring its light to his people, whose early converts, including his late father, had accepted Christianity in the externals of churchgoing, participation in church bazaars, donations and contributions to church projects. In private life, they mostly hold on to the old beliefs, consulting diviners, and relying for their well-being on the protective charms made for them by witch-doctors. His daydream is of massive conversion of his people to Christianity, in such a way that the participatory aspects of Christian religious worship, like singing and instrumentation, will reflect the language, idiom, and rhythm of traditional music and sensibility and elicit their native religious feelings. Upon the whole, the goal is a cultural revolution in Ado. Such is a revolution to see an end to the present practice of negotiating a live and let live arrangement whereby the community welcomes change in the social environment and at the same time keeps its identity unchanged. His goal, to borrow from Okolo of The Voice, is to give life a new root, to make it cease to be mere externality, to supply in Ado a new 'inside' to underpin practice. Patrick does not judge his forebears, but his determination to attain a mode of living in which the surface is the output of the deep structure simply means to substitute the ancestral ideology with the Christian one. He is caught up in another pretence however. Having been Nkiru's lover during the holidays, and made her pregnant, his high ideals of bringing salvation and hope to those dogged by night desert him utterly; only his instinct of self-preservation remains active. Nkiru is to be good enough to go and cope with her situation as best as she could, and not denounce him. For her to be good-natured is to forget herself and focus only on his desire for the celibate priesthood. In Chukwuemeka Ike's The Potter's Wheel, the state of play is equally that traditional values and ways are very powerful influences on the behaviour of the people who have accepted Western education, Christianity, and the artefacts and material elements of Western culture and civilization. For example, the only son of Mazi Laza is suspected to be an ogbanje, what is encountered in Tutuola's The Witch-Herbalist of the Remote Town as a 'born and die baby.' The man is rather too fearful of his colleagues in the leadership of the village church to do anything about it. So the initiative passes to his wife, who offers to call in the traditional specialist Nwomiko to examine him, ... unless you know a better way of handling the matter.' 'I don't know what the Catechist will say if he hears that Laza brought a pagan woman to…'
Don't annoy me with that stale story of yours about the Catechist,' cut in Mama Obu. 'The Catechist should not push his mouth into something he knows nothing about. If he chooses to do so that is his own lookout. If he can remove ogbanje, let him tell us; if he cannot, he should shut his mouth and stop interfering with those to whom God has given the power to do so.' Mazi Laza yielded, but wanted to be given prior notice of the date when the Awa woman would come; that would enable him to arrange an alibi for himself to escape the Catechist's certain query when he got to learn about the visit (The Potter's Wheel44). It would come out subsequently that Mazi Laza is greatly relieved that his wife has taken the initiative and dealt with the suspected ogbanje problem in the traditional manner, without flinching at the sacrificial rituals involved. But she is equally assertive in the matter of the child's upbringing, and this is a factor of complication in the narrative. A similar alibi is arranged in Ake for Wole's father, a Christian, by the grandfather, or Father, as he is called by his son's family 'as if with capital letters' (66), when he fortifies the character-narrator against magic. The main reason for this ritual act is the fear of magical forces and poisoning, which is widespread in Isara, the natal home of the father, a fear exercised by Wild Christian, the mother, particularly when the family is visiting at Isara. The father agrees that she has reason for these fears. But he does not think that her way of guarding against the danger, such as incessant prayer and restraining the children from accepting food or shaking hands with any, but the closest members of the Isara family, is adequate. The ritual action the character-narrator will refer to as having mysterious potions incised into his bloodstream (188) recalls Idu, where Amarajeme declares that he is going to cook his son 'in a pot, so no witch will be able to reach him.' This immunizing of Wole is accomplished apparently with the father's connivance, as the grandfather more than hints to the child: 'I've arranged it all with your father, only I had not decided on the day. Now I think we'll get it over with tomorrow' (144). When all is accomplished, and he has commended the child warmly for his courage and endurance through the ordeal, he gives instruction: 'Listen very carefully, and this in spite of what anyone, ANYONE tells you.... If they tell you the contrary, tell them I said it.... 'Whoever offers you food, take it. Eat it. Don't be afraid, so long as your heart says, Eat… It is I that say so. If [] you experience even one moment of doubt, turn your back on that place and never go back. Next, don't ever turn your back on a fight…. Wherever you find yourself, don't run away from a fight. Your adversary will probably be bigger, he will trounce you the first time. Next time you meet him, challenge him again. He will beat you all over again. The third time, I promise you this, you will either defeat him, or he will run away. Are you listening to what I am telling you?' (147). What is communicated in the magical process is not only immunity, but an early warning system, as well as an energy with delayed action to be released only when one knows how to stand up for oneself fearlessly in the face of superior force. There seems to be no attempt whatever at a disguise in the case of Bukola, the àbikú child of the mission bookseller, who tends to argue for a literal interpretation of the Bible. Of this young girl, the bookseller's only child, we read. 'Amulets, bangles, tiny rattles and dark copper-twist rings earthed her through ankles, fingers, wrists and waist' (16). It would appear that any level of accommodation could be allowed between the traditional system and the Christian one, when human life is under threat. Another problem which seems to be as capable of driving all before it as ogbanje and àbikú in the above is childlessness. This is a problem which Teacher Zaccheus Kanu is confronted with in his marriage to Deborah Onuekwucha. He takes the expedient of traditionally approved polygamy. But he goes about it in a way quite like Laza, when he absents himself from the ogbanje ritual for his son. We read in Mazi Laza's narrative to his wife that, 'Teacher recently decided to marry a wife for the sake of his mother, to bear children for the family, as Teacher is the only surviving male. Everybody, of course, knows that the woman with Teacher's mother is meant for Teacher. The Church will stop him from teaching if he takes a second wife or changes wives' (93-94). We read on page 136 that the wife had already borne him a daughter, which had shown that the hitch [in the official marriage] did not come from Teacher.' Despite that the characters are quick to reach into the traditional system when they are faced with problems for which the answer provided by the new system they have accepted is unpleasant or unsatisfactory, there is a clear sense of a perceived need to go deeper into the Western system, and if possible to become part of it in Nzekwu's Blade Among the Boys. The people treat the device of accommodation as the well-founded procedure, and moreover the path of wisdom. The attitude is to make use of the institutions and tools of the west for one's advantage, and the advantage of one's kin, and if one needs to adopt Western ways, to do so as a form of disguise in order to exploit it all the more effectively. They cannot understand a young man taking it seriously enough to identify with it. In The Potter's Wheel, it is the father who determines that the established ways and means have to be transcended, and proposes to launch the son as a spearhead in this movement of change. The struggle between the father and the son throughout the narrative is to bring the son to appropriate this vision. The critical point is reached when total rebellion from the father's values threatens, with the mothers powerful backing, forcing the father to place all his cards on the table He tells Obu about Edmund Okechukwu who has led the way in Umuchukwu in the pursuit of higher education, and about Caleb Okeke, the former's age mate, who is 'a truck pusher at Onitsha' and 'occasionally takes things that are not his' then concludes: 'Mazi Ekeneme bought a lorry and had inscribed on it NOTHING WITHOUT LABOUR...' Edmund is what he is because his father forgot yams, forgot cocoyams, forgot meat and sent him to suffer in Teacher's hands. It was Teacher who made him. Teacher tells me your brain is even hotter than Edmund's. So there's no reason why you should not drink tea with the white man and study in the white man's land. But if you want to be like Caleb, you should come home and live with your mother, eating goat meat, drinking palm wine and dancing with masquerades. But when the time comes, don't say I did not warn you (214-215). We do not see in Mazi Laza's discourse any hint of a useful purpose that may result from Obu's penetration of the white man's world, and we can say simply that his views are quite advanced. Launching the son into the heartland of the white man's culture is an end in itself, in which the father invests limitless amounts of emotion, in which he invites the son to do the same. The obstacle he sees before him is the mother whose value system is entirely of the cultural tradition. Thus she assigns the highest possible value to having this one son (besides her six girls) to give meaning to her motherhood; and all she wishes is to have him physically flourishing beside her. School alone is the serious engagement she allows Obu to participate in. Beyond this, no manner of application is entertained, the very thing that his father regards as the key to success. Mama Obu's training regime for the child comprises the providing of as much pleasure as possible, in terms of play, delicacies of all kinds, sleep to his heart's content, and so on. All this goes against the principles Mazi Laza professes and wishes to inculcate in Obu. The mother actively helps to thwart Mazi Laza's attempts to instil discipline and a sense of purpose. We see an instance in a dialogue between mother and child in their shared bedroom, when the whole family, including the youngest, six year old Amuche, is preparing to leave for the yam fields a good way off to continue the work of harvesting and bringing home the produce in headloads. This work has been going on for some days without Obu's participation, despite his father's orders: 'Mama,' whispered Obu, I don't want to come out until Papa leaves for the farm. If I do he will take me to the farm. Leave my food where I can find it. Don't lock Papa's room; I shall learn to ride the bicycle today.' 'Who will teach you?' his mother enquired also in a whisper. 'David.' 'Is he strong enough to hold the bicycle for you?' 'Yes, Ma. It was he who taught Polycarp.' 'All right, but don't let that wild pig called Samuel come near you. He is already as stone-hearted as his dead father. That's why he is stunted. And his mother is not the woman to bring up a boy properly. That boy doesn't look at you with good eyes, so beware' (29-30). This impregnable blockage presented at every turn Mazi Laza determines to circumvent by sending Obu to Teacher Kanu as a houseboy. More than half the novel is taken up by the narration of the brutalities Obu and his fellow servants suffer at the hands of Teacher Kanu and his wife. After being delayed at Teacher's house for a couple of days, Mazi Laza's emissary Madu 'declares that Teacher more than 'deserves every cup of palm wine extended to him if only for successfully keeping house 'with that tigress he married as wife. She has no comparison!' (204). Unlike Patrick of Blade Among the Boys as ward of his uncle Andrew, whose mistress is almost as keen a slave driver as Teacher's wife, there is no escape or relief for the latter's victims. The main reason for this, as comes out very clearly in the endless narration of cruelty, is that Teacher is a fellow slave driver, and in some respects worse than his wife. For this is a man who has no qualms to seize a man's first son as collateral on a loan, and publicizes the fact. Obu has lived with the couple for one full year, and has known in all this time nothing but cruelty, starvation and deprivation, savage beatings and bodily injuries deliberately inflicted. As a result, he thinks he has had enough. He changes his mind, however, when his father discloses to him the hopes that have driven him, which as far as he knows, only the extremity of 'Teacher's hands' has so far proved capable of delivering. In Ake which ends as the young character-narrator is preparing to enter Government College, Ibadan, on a government scholarship, the transition is rather from a world in which physical pain is thought of as essential for character moulding to one which de-emphasises physical pain, but is no less confusing. If there is occasional beating at the government college, it is purely 'ceremonial caning.' The discipline is quite different. The students wear no shoes, may have no pockets in their uniforms, have no underwear, and are made to say 'Sir-Sir-Sir, like slaves' (230), because, according to the Rev. Mr Kuti, the school administrators are colonizers (227). Their commitment is to the moulding and raising of colonial subjects to fit into certain predetermined roles. In Ake the vision of the future for which one is to prepare oneself is deeply split. What faces the subject is a role, which may be public and political, or private in the family environment. There is very little sense of a need for the individual to be able to stand up for himself, and in confrontation with whatever circumstances may chance. Ayo, Wole's father, is concerned with his son making a success of his life, so as to exercise leadership in the family. In short, he is to be a family man. He brings this out clearly in an interview at a time he has grave health worries, as if he might even die: 'You are not to let anything defeat you,' he began, 'because you are the man of the family, and if you are not strong, what would you expect Tinu and the others to do? What you must pursue at all times is your education. Do not neglect that. Now you know I've always wanted you to go to Government College. '… You will find that only determination will bring one through, sheer determination. And faith in God—don't ever neglect your prayers. You are the man of the family, remember that others will look up to you. You must never let them down.' He shook his head for emphasis, 'Never, never let them down!' (162).
The regime of training in the household is geared towards producing a tough, resilient, and reliable individual. A point of convergence between Ayo's regime of training and that of the government college is in the matter of shoes. Both prescribe that young people are not to wear shoes. But the ends differ, if we accept Mr Kuti's interpretation of the rule in the government college. In the code enunciated above by Ayo, education is purely functional. Its role is to provide his son the means to be a dependable man of the family. Education is indeed a question that exercises most of the novels we are concerned with in this chapter. It is raised in Blade Among the Boys, where it is called the 'hallmark of a gentleman,' and at the same time, an instrument of propaganda in the hands of the religious authorities who run the schools. In No Longer at Ease, Obi Okonkwo espouses an attitude opposite to that in Ayo's code, and proclaims a need to rethink the popular view of 'education for white collar jobs.' Similarly, there is a sense in Ake of education being put to various and conflicting purposes. In the view of the Rev. Mr Kuti education is something the colonial government is using as an instrument for the transformation of the impressionable young into servile colonial subjects (192). But he thinks of his own efforts as proprietor and principal of Abeokuta Grammar School in terms of character formation to the extent that Wole's 'two years as a Grammarian' before transferring to Government College 'ought to have done it' (230). In other words, he has been using formal education as a context and an enabling environment for character moulding. Although Wole sees his future in terms which confirm that he is following his father's code—he is hoping to be a medical practitioner—his own inclination and circumstances, or what Achebe might call the Power of Event, drive him towards political activism. He has his first experience of this in the women's tax revolt led by Beere, the Rev. Mr Kuti's wife. His participation earns him the accolade 'Man of Strife' from Beere herself. Action in the political domain appears to be the whole point of character moulding by the Rev. Mr Ransome-Kuti for whom Wole has the greatest admiration. The character-narrator more than suspects that his natural inclination is towards the values of Mr and Mrs Kuti, which are remarkably similar: With them I never needed, to ask so many questions. They were always ready to talk to me ... Daodu would often collar me, even if I was quietly reading in the parlour or dining room and ask me if I had heard some recent item of news from Lagos or elsewhere ... if I had not yet encountered the item of news he would shake his head reprovingly, 'You must take an interest! Don't just stick your nose in that dead book you are reading. Don't you see, if Mussolini could undermine the independence of Abyssinia, what chance has the new National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons got with their demand for some measure of self-government?' (228). The Kutis' values tie in perfectly with those of the grandfather who presents life to him as a series of battles from which he must not flee, even if his opponent has superior force. Under the tutelage of the Kutis, he is being made to grasp that his powerful enemy is the political establishment at all levels, local, national, and international. By contrast, that life may be seen in terms of strife is what Obi Okonkwo discovers to his great astonishment in No Longer at Ease: the title of the novel would in fact seem to call attention to this discovery as the peripeteia of the tragic sequence. This movement of discovery is adumbrated in the poem he has written towards the end of his stay in England, and which seems to flow from the mood of these last days, while thoughts of the home country and his role in its up-building increasingly occupy his mind. We see it also reflected in the way in which he resumes the relationships suspended during the period of studies in England, and captures the mood in which he takes up a position in the government scholarship board. In this poem, the fatherland is called a 'Great land of sunshine bright,' the people characterized as having 'purity' and 'zest for life and jollity.' He first stumbles upon and re-reads this poem when his financial troubles begin to mount and he finds he has to cut down his domestic expenses. He reads it one more time when his relationship with Clara comes to an end having turned his world, family relationships, his sense of right, and his very self-image upside down. After this last reading, he destroys the poem (137). The relationship with Clara has led him to a confrontation with his oldest friend Joseph and with the Umuofia Progressive Union, which had provided the loan that had made university education abroad possible for him. He has gone on to fight with his father, but finds he cannot hold out against his mother. This is Obi's catastrophe, this moment of submission to his mother's superior force, a force he had not thought to exist, and at any rate, not one that it had ever crossed his mind might be brought to bear against him, because of his special relationship to her. This change in fortune is marked by his losing his footing. He is sliding downwards ever after. The trauma of defeat by his mother is what leads directly to the casting off of Clara, but not before an abortion has been arranged for her. This event seems to have destroyed whatever is left of his moral being, weakening him fatally in the fight he is charged to put up against bribery and corrupt practice. Unlike Wole, Obi does not perceive himself in simple opposition to the establishment. The commitment he announces at his reception by the Umuofia Union is to serve his nation 'well and truly' (29), and this is why he is so antagonistic to the old Africans in senior positions in the public service. He thinks they do not serve the country well and truly. On the other hand, he has grudging respect for such expatriates as Mr Green his boss, because even though Mr Green does not believe in the country, he nevertheless overworks habitually in its service. For Obi, work like life itself is participatory. The very system itself which the colonists are setting up for the purpose of building up and running the new nation-state equally demands participation. This institution dedicated to the service of the nation-state is what he understands as the government. Hence his critical reflection on the language of the president or chairman of the Umuofia Union, as he is variously called, when he inquires whether he has got a job yet: 'Have they given you a job?' the chairman asked Obi over the music. In Nigeria the government was 'they.' It had nothing to do with you or me. It was an alien institution and people's business was to get as much as they could from it without getting into trouble (29-30).
Government and the public service as something to get as much as one could out of, we have already seen to be the correct and socially approved attitude in Blade Among the Boys. In Obi's reflection here government is apparently something to believe in, to which one belongs, and from which one has no right to take more than one has put in. Education has a role to play in this, for this is what enables one to put in the most in the building up and functioning of the national institutions. But education is more than an enabling condition to render service (29); it is a key factor of self-improvement under the new dispensation, and the condition of social mobility which does not necessarily presuppose other social advantages. In Obi's reflection below, the tone is strongly ironic, embittered by experience, yet his sympathies can be made out, and they lie with those who give education a priority rating. Miss Elsie has called on Obi in his residence to try and influence him to support her application for a scholarship. Obi does not look down on her for putting herself out: 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. A university education was the philosopher's stone. It transmuted a third-class clerk on one hundred and fifty a year into a senior Civil Servant on five hundred and seventy, with car and luxuriously furnished quarters at nominal rent. And the disparity in salary and amenities did not tell even half the story. To occupy a 'European post' was second only to actually being a European. It raised a man from the masses to the elite whose small talk at cocktail parties was: 'How's the car behaving?' (84). Education is an instrument of social mobility because of the many-advantages and rewards with which the colonial government has surrounded it. But Obi's reflection here is bitterly ironic, insofar as it does not stop at stating the facts, but does so with a morally judgemental tone. The educated enjoy privileges for which no hard justification can be found, and celebrate their triumph at parties, where the small talk is about how the car is doing. Nevertheless, for all these negative associations in the regard and uses of education in his country and the judgemental tone with which he details them, Obi isn't in the least moved towards the exercise of a moral repugnance. He accepts all those privileges even as he complains against them for having no justification. He will not break away and cease to benefit from the objectionable practice because the ethical categories of right and wrong, though knowable, are as it were suspended as imperatives. He commits himself rather to an opposite view: if education confers all the advantages in question, then it is worth any sacrifice. Elsewhere we do see Obi attaching unquestionably positive associations to education. At higher levels, it does bring a certain self-confidence whereby the individual may choose without embarrassment what suits his circumstances best. We read, for instance, that Obi and his friend Christopher, like most second generation educated Nigerians have gone back to eating foo-foo with their fingers. According to them, it tastes better that way. This contrasts with Obi's father's veneration of Western culture, as in his regard of writing and print. Education, in short, creates a new man out of the colonial subject. In John Munonye's A Dancer of Fortune, we encounter hardly anyone with higher education; the two persons we see move from initially disadvantageous positions to higher social levels are probably both early school dropouts, forced out of school by the death of the family bread winner. That they go on to change their status is by seizing the opportunities that come their way and climbing upon the backs of others, ruthlessly exploiting their weaknesses. The story of Marianna who becomes her employer's mistress has resemblances to that of Ayasko, the dancer of fortune, in whose reflections the key facts of the lady's history are captured: She had lost her father when she was barely ten years old, with four brothers and sisters younger than her. So what? Marianna, was it Avarido who killed your father? Why should he be caring for all your family, including your mother and her asthma?' It was this same mother and I her asthma, who had started it all. For it was in your efforts to get her cured that you came to know the managing-proprietor. They said you paid fully for the drugs you received on the first day. But on the second day you paid only half the cost. On the third day, you paid with your beautiful smile which must have penetrated into Avarido's innermost being and caused his nerves to ring. After that he became your man (78). Neither Marianna nor Ayasko has any sound moral principles lo live by: what controls their morality is purely self-interest or the need to preserve and secure what they have won and the sources of their winnings. In the end, this is all the morality that seems to be known in the world of the Dancer of Fortune. For the dealers in patent medicine on whose backs Ayasko climbs have built up their businesses by exploiting the ignorance and credulity of the people. They peddle to them medicines of all kinds for which they first create the need by working on the people's sentiments and tapping into their love for music and dance. Universal and improbable virtues are claimed for these drugs, but they are never taken up on the fraud, nor the claims tested, because the dealers take shelter in the cover that the patent medicine manufacturers have provided for themselves. Ayasko draws attention to this cover early on: Those who manufacture medicines are wise men, I tell you! They say: "If the sickness continues after you have had the prescribed dose, go and see your doctor." They do not ask anyone to claim back his money from the dealer' (A Dancer of Fortune 1). At every level in the patent medicine dealer's business, there is falsehood and imposture. Here are the credentials of Ogoroba, Avarido Medicals salesman, for prescribing drugs, including injections—or in Ogoroba's parlance, acupuncture, to be administered by himself: Ogoroba had been an attendant in one of the private hospitals in Dekko. He had learnt a lot from the nurses—he didn't know about the doctors. That was before [Avarido] went to him making promises. Without doubt, he had lived up to most of his promises, including the one about it allowing Ogoroba lo prescribe and dispense medicines (1). But Avarido himself is as much an impostor. He has no training for the medical practice he keeps up in his establishment, Bui whereas Ogoroba is driven mainly by an ego which exceeds his power to control. Avarido is driven bold by a sense of power and greed for money. All the big medicine dealers in Dekko are under the rule of the twofold master, and this is why they move against each other to destroy each other's business. Imposture is a form of malpractice familiar in literature, from Greek times. The Greeks called it alazon; and the Spanish were to contribute a form which resembled it, known as the picaresque (from picaro. 'a thief) (see Ian Watt, 1957:105-106), The central character of a picaresque sequence is 'the clever, likeable, unprincipled' thief (Frye, 1957/1070:45) who is quick in exploiting his circumstances to his advantage, and therefore gets on and achieves success in spite of initial disadvantages. Such is Ayasko of A Dancer of Fortune. He overturns the career of one impostor after another, and ends up on top not because thievery is better or a lesser evil than imposture. The appearing of the picaro is always a signal that we are in the comic plane; it inverts the tragic pattern to the extent that there is a certain inevitability in his overcoming and outwitting his antagonists. His victory is assured, as long as the literary work does not succumb to manipulation by 'the god in the machine,' the poet as a committed writer. In fact, the narrative ends with Ayasko as a picaro poised to resume the career of the impostors he has defeated, Sabanco, Marabu, Avarido, and Chindi of Deo Volente. That this appears to be his purpose is in the very air when he arrives in court to hear the result of his suit against Eddy Chindi, whose patent medicine business he is claiming: Suddenly shouts of Ayasko my man!' . . . drowned all noises. The taxi had already pulled up. The door was flung open. Out leapt Ayasko, looking as if he was in a hurry. He waved to the crowd acknowledging their cheers….
Contrary to all expectation, Ayasko went over to where Sabanco and Marabu and Avarido and Chindi together with Lanson, were standing. Like a true sportsman, he waved them a general good morning with both hands, smiling pleasantly (187). Thus our last sighting of Ayasko is in the company of the big medicine dealers in Dekko; it is in their league that he belongs, with them he identifies. Even though these are his antagonists, the problem between them is internal to a league which here gathers as a distinct sub-class in opposition to other groups, in opposition, particularly to the crowd, the masses. Ayasko has made his way in the world following his instincts, with the result that every move he makes and every circumstance of his life is purely transitional and a stepping stone to something else. It is this restless disposition that drives him in his decisions, as when he leaves school and his foster parents to join his uncle, a hotel manager in Lagos. He will flee from this uncle and join a highlife band, whom he will in turn abandon to become a public entertainer in Dekko, first as a dancer in Sabanco's advertising team. One after the other, he will work for the big medicine dealers in Dekko, until he has made his way into their league and become a powerful rival. From Sabanco to Marabu and Avarido, he is gaining in mental sophistication; no longer content with earning a living, he learns to bargain with his dancing talents, his ambition widening as he advances. By the time he leaves Avarido, he has begun to participate in decision-making. But then his fellow employees, Ogoroba and Marianna, rise up against him when they find him trying to edge them out. When he leaves Avarido to join De Volente, it is not only by following his instinct to know when to jump. He makes sure to wreck Avarido's business completely as he does so; putting about among the credulous Dekko population that; Avarido not only distributes medicines, but also disease-causing viruses, as a matter of policy. When he finishes with him, the masses are exclaiming: 'Avarido! The one who poisons in order to cure...? He alone knows the poison he has administered and therefore he alone will sell you, the antidote' (143). Here his motivation is personal revenge. But he will graduate into higher things. When he joins Deo Volente, his goal is already set, namely the dispossession and despoiling of Eddy Chindi, the proprietor. We read of his first full meeting with Eddy Chindi: Thus ended his first probing for Chindi's vulnerable points. It had not yielded much result except if one should take special note of Eddy Chindi's easy ways, his tendency to easy confidences. This man Eddy Chindi was an entirely different type of person from any of the big patent medicine men in Dekko. Who in the world would doubt that? Not if you knew them as Ayasko did (130). He starts early to look for vulnerable points, and ruthlessly exploits them when he finds them. Nothing in his relationship with the impostors can be explained from this point onwards by reference to need or provocation, but pure greed and uncontrolled desire. Hence his credo: 'I, Aya, better known as Ayasko, desire to live in comfort like everyone else' (132). With Chindi he is a shrewd and calculating operator, and employs humour and double-talk as a cover, while manoeuvring and propelling himself into the position of partnership with his unsuspecting employer. In business dealings he is prepared to brook further practices which are against the law, than those for which he has precedent. He has plans, if the big suppliers are reluctant, to obtain his supplies from smugglers, hospital hands, drugstore attendants, and all such 'baskets' from which medicines may leak (169). Clearly, it is more than a desire for comfort that drives him now: it is the desire to impose upon the whole Dekko. He will not be seeking for a share of the market in patent medicine in Dekko: he wants the entire market for himself alone. The smugglers, hospital hands, drugstore attendants, Chindi himself, are all means for him to achieve this end. Ayasko makes a remarkable gesture when he moves from the status of a public entertainer to that of a magnate in Dekko. He makes an appearan ce at the offic es of the Controller of Health in a get quite unlike hi s trademark motley: He wore a neup atly tailored, grey suit, which explained why he had gained such an easy a dmission into the sanctimonious wing of the block where the Controller's off ice was located front of the door, he turned round to addres . Stopping in s the fans, like an important per sonality giving a press conference (146). Neither his fans nor the busine ss rivals realize that this is a new man, dressed for a new role. But this i s Ayasko's debut into the world of power relations as a controller of cap ital. His last act when he leaves the world of entertainment is to select a brace of talented lads, whom he calls 'Ayasko's children.' Henceforth, these are to do the dancing at publi c sales for which Ayasko has been enamoured of the Dekko public, while th e latter sees to the sales and es pecially the management of the expanding empire he is determined and poise wrest from Eddy Chindi. d to