Colonial Conflicts leads to Alienation and Rootlessness in Achebe’s No Longer at Ease

Abstract

This article is an effort to bring in light the theme of alienation and rootlessness generated by colonial conflicts in Achebe's No Longer at Ease. Achebe through his writing shows that how colonial rule and English education reject native values and try to install Christianity as the only true faith and consider themselves racially superior to the natives. The whites colonize the natives to dominate over them and impost their own ideas and religious beliefs on them. Colonizer induced the colonized natives to abandon the way of life and culture and imitate the colonial's. As a result native began to practice European thinking and started to alienate from their culture and society For Achebe the worst consequences of colonization is that one is currently alienated from his own community. It seems that Achebe has conceived the story in the light of his own experience during the colonization of Africa by the whites. The purpose of this paper is to show how colonial conflicts bring changes in the life of natives and how they began to alienate from their own roots.