A Man Of The People By Chinua Achebe Pdf Merge

Complete summary of Chinua Achebe's A Man of the People. ENotes plot summaries cover all the significant action of A Man of the People. INDEPENDENCE AND AFTER: A MAN OF THE PEOPLE AND ANTHILLS OF THE. - Chinua Achebe. Hopes and Impediments (1990, 170). Nigeria attained its much awaited. The northern part joining Nigeria and the Southern part joining the Federal Republic of. Sir Abubakar served as Prime.

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Odili Samalu

Odili Samalu is the novel's protagonist and narrator. He is born into a successful and politically-involved family, and he distinguishes himself as a privileged member of society due to his top-tier education. At the beginning of the novel, Odili is working as a school teacher in Anata. While there, he reconnects with an old teacher, Chief M.A. Nanga. Impressed by Odili's educational background, the Chief invites him to spend time in the nation's capital. During his time at Chief Nanga's house, the Minister seduces Odili's then-girlfriend, Elsie. After this event, Odili vows to take revenge on Chief Nanga. He aims to both seduce the Chief's fiancee and contest his seat in the cabinet.

Through Odili's narration, the reader is able to get a unique perspective into the character's inner thoughts, feelings, and motivations. Odili reveals that it was a long-kept secret that his mother died during his birth. This detail accounts for the narrator's heightened sense of deception and his strained relationship with his father. We find that Odili grapples with his masculinity and is tormented by his deep sense of insecurity. These feelings often drive the character to make rash and vengeful decisions. Additionally, we discover that Odili is hypocritical. While he criticizes the selfishness and capitalistic nature of the politicians, we find that Odili quickly succumbs to the privileges that his political involvement awards him. At the end of the novel, it is difficult to decide whether Odili has actually grown from his experiences or if he is still too self-involved to think beyond his material acquisitions.

Chief M. A. Nanga

Chief M.A. Nanga is the country's Minister of Culture in the reigning P.O.P. political party. He is Odili's antagonist and competitor throughout the novel. Before venturing into politics, Chief Nanga was a school teacher from Anata. When he visits his former school, he recognizes Odili as one of his old students and invites him to stay at his home in the capital. Through Odili's narration, we see Chief Nanga as a power-hungry, selfish, and corrupt politician. His interest in Odili is rooted in his former student's privilege, and he unscrupulously hurts the common man in an effort to promote his luxurious personal agenda.

When Chief Nanga sleeps with Odili's then-girlfriend, Elsie, it sparks Odili to take revenge on the Minister. Odili then aims to contest Chief Nanga's political seat and to steal his newest wife. Chief Nanga slanders Odili throughout his campaign and orders his followers to harass and berate his competition. In one of the story's closing scenes, the Chief notices that Odili has disguised himself and snuck into the incumbent's rally. Chief Nanga brings Odili onstage and embarrasses the young candidate, and then he beats him. During Odili's hospitalization and recovery, we find that Chief Nanga has won the election unopposed. However, his government is overthrown and he is arrested following the military coup.

Edna

Edna is Chief Nanga's latest bride-to-be. She is a village girl from a poor family, and she is given a hefty dowry for her engagement to the Chief. After Chief Nanga seduces Elsie, Odili views Edna as a conquest and a means of seeking revenge. Odili visits Edna at her home, where he encounters her strict father and has a bicycle accident. Throughout Odili's pursuit, Edna reveals that she does not desire to marry the Chief, but feels stuck due to her father's pressure and her family's dependence on the dowry. As time progresses, Odili stops viewing Edna as a means of revenge but instead falls in love with her for her beauty and intellect. In the novel's final scene, Odili gathers money to pay a higher dowry in order for them to marry.

Elsie

Elsie is a nurse and Odili's casual girlfriend from his time at University. Although they have been together for some time, Odili never fully defines their relationship. When Chief Nanga invites Odili to stay at his home in Bori, Odili is excited because Elsie also lives in the capital. Chief Nanga asks Odili about their relationship, to which Odili replies that Elsie is merely a 'good-time girl.' After Odili brings her as a guest to Chief Nanga's house, the Minister seduces Elsie. This action demonstrates the Chief's selfish and womanizing ways. Odili vows to take revenge on Chief Nanga for his behavior, and he chooses to contest the Chief's cabinet seat in the upcoming election.

Hezekiah Samalu

Hezekiah Salamu is Odili's father. We learn from Odili that during the narrator's childhood, Hezekiah worked as a District Interpreter. This job distinguished the family as being both educated and high-class, and Odili explains that this status made him feel as though he was a target. Additionally, Hezekiah works as the chairman of his local P.O.P precinct. As Odili contests Chief Nanga's seat, his father's local political involvement becomes a particularly important point of analysis.

Odili and his father have a strained relationship. This is due to both the circumstances of Odili's birth, and his father's reckless obsession with having numerous wives, an obsession that he cannot financially afford. Hezekiah disapproves of his son's involvement in the C.P.C., yet their differences never divide the two from one another. In the story's closing scene, we find that Hezekiah steadfastly remains next to his son's hospital bed despite their ideological differences.

Maxwell Kulamo

Maxwell Kulamo is Odili's friend from University. He works alongside his fiancee, Eunice, as a lawyer in Bori. Max is the leader of a new political party called the C.P.C. (Common People's Convention). He is profoundly inspired by Karl Marx, and he aims to fight for a new era of politics that champions the common man. Odili speaks of Max very fondly, as he is inspired by his political commitment and his intellect. After Chief Nanga seduces Elsie, Odili reaches out to Max in order to join the C.P.C. and contest the incumbent faction.

When Odili is offered a bribe by Chief Nanga to renounce his campaign, he discovers that Max has taken a bribe from Chief Koko in order to finance the C.P.C. When Odili awakes from his coma, he discovers that Max was killed by Chief Koko and that Eunice shot Chief Koko out of revenge. Following the coup, the army declares Max a hero and martyr of the revolution. Odili promises to build a school and dedicate it to Max in honor of his commitment to equality.

Eunice

Eunice is Max's fiancée. She works alongside Max as a lawyer in Bori. Like Max, Eunice is an active member of the C.P.C. Odili describes her as beautiful and intelligent, and he even voices that he is slightly envious of their supportive and loving relationship. After Max is killed by Chief Koko, Eunice takes revenge and shoots the Chief twice in the heart.

Mrs. Nanga

Mrs. Nanga is Chief Nanga's wife. She is described by Odili as homely and matriarchal, and she does not know much English. During Odili's stay at Chief Nanga's home, Mrs. Nanga leaves to bring her children to a small village. After Chief Nanga sleeps with Elsie, Odili leaves to visit Mrs. Nanga and try to understand more about Chief Nanga's personal life. Although she is first friendly to Odili, Mrs. Nanga turns sour once the narrator threatens her husband's political position.

Jean and John

Jean and John are a couple working as American ambassadors to the unnamed African country. Odili finds their presence irritating, as they consistently speak poorly about Africa and offer a neocolonialist perspective. Odili finds himself physically attracted to Jean, and the two sleep together after a party. As Jean drives Odili through Bori's winding streets, Odili finds himself growing angry at her disapproval of the city's urban planning. Thus, Jean and John represent the persistence of a colonial presence and perspective in a post-colonial African society.

The Tortoise and the Birds is a fable of probable folk origin, early versions of which are found in both India and Greece. There are also African variants. The moral lessons to be learned from these differ and depend on the context in which they are told.

Early Indian versions[edit]

A tale concerning a talkative tortoise appears in the Buddhist scriptures as the Kacchapa Jataka.^[1] In this version, it is framed by the account of a talkative king who finds in his courtyard a tortoise that has fallen from the sky and split in two. His adviser explains that this had come about as a result of talking too much. A tortoise had become friendly with two geese who promised to take it to their home in the Himalayas. They would hold a stick in their beaks while the tortoise would grasp it in his mouth, but he must be careful not to talk. Children below made fun of it during the journey and when it answered back it fell to its destruction. Jataka tales were a favourite subject for sculpture and this story is found as a bas relief on various religious buildings in India and Java. Often depicted as synoptic narratives, the episodes encountered include the birds carrying the tortoise between them, its fall and its fate on reaching the earth.^[2] In the 9th century Mendut temple in Java, for example, the birds and tortoise appear at top right, while on the ground huntsmen take aim with bows. Immediately below, the same three are preparing the fallen body for food.^[3]

As in the Mendut example, other versions of the story are depicted even in Buddhist contexts. In the Indian literary variation of the story in the Panchatantra, the tortoise and her friends live in a lake that is beginning to dry up. Pitying the future suffering of their friend, the geese suggest they fly off with her in the manner already described. On hearing the comments of people in the city they are passing, the tortoise tells them to mind their own business. After her fall in consequence, she is cut up and eaten.^[4] The story was eventually included in the tales of Bidpai and travelled westward via translations into Persian, Syriac, Arabic, Greek, Hebrew and Latin. The last of these began to be translated into other European languages at the end of the Middle Ages. A still later retelling appears in the Hitopadesha, where the migration occurs because of the appearance of a fisherman. Cowherds below suggest that the flying tortoise would make a good meal and it falls while making an acid response.^[5]

An Italian version of Bidpai's fables was early translated into English by Thomas North under the title of The Morall Philosophie of Doni (1570).^[6] The story of the tortoise and the birds appears in a section illustrating the sentiment that 'a man hath no greater enemy than himself'. The French fabulist Jean de la Fontaine also found the story in an early digest of Bidpai's work and added it to his fables as La Tortue et les deux Canards (X.3). For him the story illustrates human vanity and imprudence. His tortoise tires of living in the same place and decides to travel. Two ducks offer to fly her to America but, while on their way, she hears people below describe her as 'the queen of tortoises' and shouts agreement.^[7] It is on this that Alexander Sumarokov appears to have based his Russian version, in which the ducks set out to carry the tortoise to France.^[8]

Travelling eastwards too, the story exists as a Mongolian folk tale with a different animal character.^[9][10] In this variation, a frog is jealous of geese discussing their coming migration and complains that they are fortunate to be able to fly to a warmer climate in winter. The geese suggest the stick plan to the frog and they set off. The frog is so delighted with himself that he cannot resist shouting down to the frogs he is leaving behind and soon rejoins them disastrously.

A variation on this appears in the Russian author Vsevolod Garshin's story called 'The Traveler Frog' (Лягушка-путешественница), which was adapted into a cartoon in 1965.^[11] There, the frog falls because it wants to tell those below that the traveling was its own idea, and not that of the ducks that carry him. Unlike in most variants, the frog falls into a pond and survives to boast of its supposed travels.^[12]

Versions in Aesop's Fables[edit]

A Man Of The People By Chinua Achebe Pdf Merge Online

There are two stories concerning a tortoise and various birds ascribed to Aesop, one in the Greek of Babrius and the other in the Latin of Phaedrus. In the Greek version, a tortoise yearns to see more of the earth and persuades the eagle to fly up with it, promising in return 'all the gifts that come from the Eastern Sea'. Once they are above the clouds, the eagle drops it onto a mountaintop. The story was given the moral that one should be content with one's lot. It spread through Europe via Latin versions in the collections of Avianus and Odo of Cheriton. Thereafter it cross-fertilised with tellings of the Indian version of the fable. The tortoise's discontent is supplied to La Fontaine's fable from this source, as it is in Jefferys Taylor's poem The Tortoise.^[13]

Babrius gives no reason for the eagle's treachery; Avianus suggests that this was because the promised payment was not forthcoming.^[14] It is the uncertainty of life, into which treachery enters, that is the subject of the alternative version of the fable, told by Phaedrus as 'The Eagle and the Crow' (2.6). It begins with the comment that 'no one is sufficiently well armed against the high and the mighty, and if there is a malicious advisor involved as well, then whoever falls victim to their criminal forces will be destroyed.' To illustrate this, he relates how an eagle has seized a tortoise but cannot eat it because of the protective shell. A passing crow advises the eagle to drop the animal 'from the starry heights' onto the rocks below, after which the two birds share its meat.^[15] By the time the story is retold by Walter of England an element of treachery has been added. The crow meets the frustrated eagle on the ground and advises it to soar up and drop its prey. Waiting behind by the rocks, the crow flies off with the fallen tortoise before the eagle can return.

African fables[edit]

An Igbo fable concerning the tortoise and the birds has gained wide distribution because it occurs in the famous novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.^[16] The tortoise, who is a West African trickster figure, hears of a feast to be given by the sky-dwellers to the birds and persuades them to take him with them, winged in their feathers. There he tells the hosts that his name is 'All-of-you' and, when they provide the food with the assurance that 'This is for all of you', claims the entire feast. The enraged birds claim their feathers back and leave. Only the parrot will agree to take a message to the tortoise's wife to pull the bedding from his house and leave it on the ground. Instead the parrot tells her to bring out all the hard things so that when the tortoise jumps down its shell is broken. He survives, however, and the broken shell is glued together. This provides the explanation of why the tortoise's shell is so uneven. Much the same story is now claimed by the Swazi people^[17] and the Kikuyu.

Merged stories and adaptations[edit]

Some retellings of the tortoise fables are extended in such a way as to suggest that two stories have been merged into one. In the case of the African fable, the tortoise gets back to earth safely but the birds decide to play him a return trick. Ets2 mods for multiplayer. A feast is provided on the ground but it is announced that this can only be eaten by those whose claws are clean. The birds fly to the river and return to alight on their food but the tortoise, having to crawl, gets its feet dirty in returning and is sent back to try again. This time it is he who misses the feast.^[18]

A Man Of The People By Chinua Achebe Pdf Merge Youtube

In a Sri Lankan continuation of the Indian version of the fable, Ibba the tortoise similarly survives its fall to earth, only to get into the clutches of Nariya, the hungry jackal. Ibba suggests to Nariya that its shell will become soft if it is soaked in the river. At first Nariya keeps a paw on the shell but then Ibba persuades him that he is soft all over except for the dry patch under Nariya's paw. When the jackal raises it, Ibba swims to safety.^[19]

Other versions merge stories more seamlessly. A narration in the Uncle Remus tradition from the former slave population of South Carolina combines Aesop's fable of the discontented tortoise with an African cumulative tale. Brer Terrapin grumbles so much about being earth-bound that the animals conspire to have him carried up and dropped to his death. Miss Crow takes him first and when she grows tired he is transferred in turn to the back of a buzzard, a hawk and King Eagle. When the eagle will not listen to his pleas to take him back, the tortoise climbs down a thread he ties to the eagle's leg and so escapes his fate.^[20]

Joseph Jacobs similarly combines both fables of Aesop in his late retelling^[21] Here the eagle is carrying the tortoise to a new home and is reminded by the crow that it is good to eat, whereupon the eagle drops it on a sharp rock and the two birds make a feast of it. This synthetic version and the moral given it, 'Never soar aloft on an enemy's pinions', is often mistaken as authentic nowadays.

References[edit]

1. ^'Jataka Tales, H.T.Francis and E.J.Thomas, Cambridge University, 1916, pp.178-80'. Archive.org. Retrieved 2013-04-14.
2. ^Jean Philippe Vogel, The Goose in Indian Literature and Art, Leiden 1962 pp.44-6
3. ^Di bbrock Brian Brock+ Aggiungi contatto. 'A photograph on the Flickr site'. Flickr.com. Retrieved 2013-04-14.
4. ^Franklin Edgerton, The Panchatantra Reconstructed, American Oriental Series, New Haven, 1924
5. ^J.P.Vogel, p.43
6. ^'Thomas North, the earliest English version of the fables of Bidpai, originally published in 1570, pp.171-5'. Archive.org. Retrieved 2013-04-14.
7. ^Translation of the poem
8. ^Item XI, 'Черепаха', in ПОЛНОЕ СОБРАНІЕ ВСѢХЪ СОЧИНЕНIЙ въ СТИХАХЪ И ПРОЗѢ, ПОКОЙНАГО .. АЛЕКСАНДРА ПЕТРОВИЧА СУМАРОКОВА (Complete Works in Verse and Prose by the late.. Alexander Petrovich Sumarokov), Moscow, 1787
9. ^Hilary Roe Metternich; P Khorloo; Norovsambuugiin Baatartsog (1996). Mongolian folktales. Boulder, CO: Avery Press in association with the University of Washington Press. ISBN0-937321-06-0.
10. ^Carolyn Han; Jay Han (1993). Why Snails Have Shells: Minority and Han Folktales from China. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN0-8248-1505-X. Retrieved 2008-03-09.
11. ^The 17-minute Russian-language version is available on YouTube
12. ^An English translation appears as the final story in this collection
13. ^'Jefferys Taylor, Aesop in Rhyme, London, 1828, pp.68-9'. Archive.org. Retrieved 2013-04-14.
14. ^'Aesop's Fables, a new translation by Laura Gibbs, Oxford University Press, 2002'. Mythfolklore.net. Retrieved 2013-04-14.
15. ^'111. THE EAGLE AND THE CROW (Laura Gibbs, translator)'. Mythfolklore.net. Retrieved 2013-04-14.
16. ^'Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart, Ibadan NG, 1958, chapter 11'. Goatrevolution.com. 2009-05-31. Archived from the original on 2012-03-26. Retrieved 2013-04-14.
17. ^Phyllis Savory, The Best of African Folklore, Cape Town ZA, 1988, pp.24-5. Books.google.co.uk. Retrieved 2013-04-14.
18. ^www.softwarehouse.it. 'ebook Tortoisethe Birdsand the Feasts Anonimo'. Readme.it. Retrieved 2013-04-14.
19. ^'Tissa Devendra, Princes, Peasants, and Clever Beasts: Sinhala Folk Stories in English, Colombo LK, 2002'. Sundaytimes.lk. Retrieved 2013-04-14.
20. ^'Emma M. Backus, 'Animal Tales from North Carolina', The Journal of American Folklore, 11.43 (Oct. - Dec., 1898), pp. 285-86'. Pitt.edu. 2013-03-21. Retrieved 2013-04-14.
21. ^'Joseph Jacobs, The Fables of Aesop, London, 1894, pp.111-12'. Mythfolklore.net. Retrieved 2013-04-14.

External links[edit]

• 15th-20th-century illustrations of 'The Talkative Tortoise' online
• 15th-20th-century illustrations of 'The Eagle and the Tortoise' online
• Cover illustration from Persia, Saqi Books 2008.
• 'Illustration from the Fables of Bidpai, Herat School, late fifteenth century'. Humanities and Social Sciences Library / Print Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs. The New York Public Library. Archived from the original on 2013-04-15. Retrieved 2008-03-09. Digital Image ID: 1110694.