A Man Of The People And Heart Of Darkness Analysis

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2. A Man of the People and Heart of Darkness : An Image of Corruption A Man of the People (1966) is viewed as Achebe’s turning from a reverence for the tribal life and traditions to a committed satirization of the national reality. This unrestrained corruption is the result of the negative impact of the contact between the European colonial powers and the African politicians and leaders. In the novel, there is a passage which shows how the political and ruling elite change their behaviour after the independence ; “We had all been in the rain together until yesterday. Then a handful of us - the smart, the lucky and hardly ever the best - had scrambled for the one shelter our former rules left, and had taken it over and barricaded themselves in.” (37). …show more content…

Nanga, who takes advantage of the national crisis and disaster, becomes the minister of culture, and soon starts working for his own benefit and striving to enrich himself. This is seen through Odili’s hypnosis by Nanga’s luxurious house with its beautiful furniture. Odili kept thinking how Nanga’s state shifted from having no thing to having everything. “ a man like Nanga has risen overnight from poverty and insignificance to his present opulence he could be persuaded without much trouble to give it up again and return to his original state”

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