[Achebe's declared aims as a writer] are twofold: to teach his people, and to satirise them; or, as he puts it, 'to help my society regain its belief in itself' and 'to expose and attack injustice'. The first is part of his contribution to the task of giving back to Africa the pride and self-respect it lost during the years of colonialism, to repair 'the disaster brought upon the African psyche in the period of subjection to alien races'. In this way, he takes his place alongside the band of historians, anthropologists, and political scientists who are hard at work on the massive task of African rehabilitation.

The second, the satirist's vocation, is in a sense loftier than the first, since it can transcend the bounds of temporary needs and exigencies; it also suggests an important role which the author has always been called upon to play. But Achebe's espousal of it arises directly out of West Africa's current predicament, in which the sins of the former conquerors are being cynically committed by the newly liberated…. A satiric note is certainly heard in the first three novels; but while bearing this in mind, it is convenient here to take these works as representative of what we might call the author's more 'pedagogic' period and to see the fourth novel. A Man of the People, as the beginning of a phase pre-eminently satiric in nature.

Achebe's desire to teach raises a number of interesting points. It is generally agreed that African literary artists have always fulfilled this function in society, so that Achebe, ostensibly espousing a modern cause, is simply falling in line with tradition. Furthermore, teaching, by its nature, implies an audience. Achebe told the world … that he does have an audience; that it is large, and, in the main, indigenous. Consisting mainly of young readers, still at school or college, this audience pays him the compliment of regarding him as its teacher.

But what really concerns us here are the implications which this holds for Achebe's style and method. Proudly African, and believing his 'pupils' should share his pride, Achebe is obviously concerned to portray with all the power at his command the beauty and rhythm of African life. What is more, since this is an indigenous audience, the most successful ways of appealing to its imagination and sensibility will be those that lie closest to indigenous modes and practice. Here the characteristics of traditional African literary art and the present need for good pedagogy meet…. Achebe developed his technique accordingly. His books do have a simple narrative line; their canvas is dominated by one central figure; imagery is clear and his style has the added virtues of lucidity and economy.

But one of the most useful devices which Achebe has employed to achieve his aim has been the African proverb. (pp. 122-23)

The reasons why Achebe uses the proverb are easily found, for the gnomic tradition, familiar in western literary history since Anglo-Saxon times, has occupied a central position in African life since time immemorial, and indeed has included precisely this didactic function with which Achebe is concerned. What is more, many scholars assert that the gnomic tradition, while either dead or moribund in the West, is still vitally alive in Africa. (p. 123)

African proverbs … represent an astonishingly versatile device. They are guides to conduct, aids to instruction, rallying cries to tribal unity, and, in a continent where the rhetorical arts are yet vigorously in bloom, the weapons of debate and the buttresses of oratory…. No situation appears too unusual for [a proverb], no aspect of social behaviour lies beyond its reach.

In the society that Achebe's novels often portray, it is the tribal elders who are the great masters of the proverb and the most fervent believers in its power…. Thus, in Arrow of God, when young men are keen to fight and risk destroying the clan, an old villager tries hard to restrain them with the powerfully blunt reminder that 'the language of young men is always pull down and destroy; but an old man speaks of conciliation'. The elders see their instruction of the young as a natural social function. Before Obi, in No Longer at Ease, sets off for England, on a scholarship provided by the Umuofia Progressive Union, one of them feels it his duty to warn him not to rush into the pleasures of the world too soon, 'like the young antelope who danced herself lame when the main dance was yet to come'; nor to marry a white woman, for thus he will be lost for ever to his people, like 'rain wasted in the forest'. Versed in his clan's myths and tales, these are allusions whose meaning and force Obi readily understands. On the hero's triumphant return from overseas, with an Honours degree in English (regarded by the clansmen as a kind of modern day Golden Fleece), an illiterate elder, no doubt feeling challenged by so much erudition among the young, explains to him why he still feels competent to offer advice. (pp. 124-25)

It is not from books but from experience and from listening to old men that the young learn wisdom; such is the perpetual theme of the elders' pronouncements. (p. 125)

More often than not, Achebe's proverbs are basically images with a didactic function, and can be used in the manner imagery is commonly used in literature, to bring into focus, and then sustain, themes the writer happens to be exploring…. The matter of clan solidarity is a case in point. Since Achebe is rehearsing the beauty of a traditional way of life and recording the anguish of its steady disintegration, this is an important concern in two of the first three books, especially when, as in No Longer at Ease, the clansmen are in Lagos, far from their homes in Iboland. In unity there is security and mutual aid in times of crisis. The clansman knows that 'He who has people is richer than he who has money', and the collective wisdom of the tribe, distilled from centuries of experience, has given him the saying 'when brothers fight to death a stranger inherits their father's estate'. (p. 126)

More richly illustrated, however, is the strong sense of tragedy pervading the novels, which all recount the downfall of their central character—Okonkwo in Things Fall Apart, Obi in No Longer at Ease, and Ezeulu in Arrow of God. When the High Priest of Ulu is shocked into silence by the news of his son's death, which he believes is a punishment from his god, Achebe uses a proverbial comparison quite magnificent in its simplicity:

They say a man is like a funeral ram which must take whatever beating comes to it without opening its mouth; only the silent tremor of pain down its body tells of its suffering.

A diligent if obstinate priest, Ezeulu cannot understand his fate; and his predicament is the more pitiful because he cannot explain it by resorting to tribal proverbs. Indeed, lying at the very heart of his grief, and potent enough to drive him insane, is a conviction that some of the fundamental precepts enshrined in the proverbs of the old dispensation—especially those governing parents' duties to their children and a god's relations with his priest—have been shockingly and brutally violated. In his final cri de coeur, with its weirdly impressive conclusion, he expresses amazement that his god could treat him so harshly. (pp. 126-27)

In all three novels there are brave efforts to bear up beneath the burdens of misfortune; and sometimes the hero will proceed by adopting an attitude of stoic realism, as Obi does when he tries to ease the pain of his mother's death with the reflection, 'The most horrible sight in the world cannot put out the eye' and then with an apparently negating proverb, 'The death of a mother is not like a palm tree bearing fruit at the end of its leaf, no matter how much we want to make it so'. In spite of this, however, the novels firmly insist on the inevitability of human suffering whether man accepts it or not. (p. 127)

The protean nature of the proverb makes its precise function sometimes difficult to determine…. But whether imposing order on chaos, rallying the tribes to brotherhood, asserting ancestral truths or evoking the pathos of man's earthly estate, it is clear that proverbs are cherished by Achebe's people as tribal heirlooms, the treasure boxes of their cultural heritage. Through them traditions are received and handed on; and when they disappear or fall into disuse (as the novelist may well fear could happen) it is a sign that a particular tradition, or indeed a whole way of life, is passing away. (p. 128)

Achebe's first three novels showed the author as teacher. His most recent book, A Man of the People …, represents the kind of writing which [his] 'The Black Writer's Burden' manifesto led us to anticipate. The novelist is here in his new role as the scourge of villainy, the outraged vox populi crying out against oppression and injustice. From instructing his society to lashing it with satire; from portraying with a touching nostalgia the beauty of a vanishing world to savagely pillorying what is succeeding it—A Man of the People indeed marks a new departure. Achebe's former avowal of giving back to his people their self-respect has been set aside for an angry statement of their present sins; and a concern with the ills inflicted on an unwilling race by colonialism has made way for concern with the ills which that race has inflicted upon itself.

This novel, therefore, differs in aim and theme from those preceding it…. Equally important, it also marks a new departure in technique, for Achebe uses here for the first time (and probably in imitation of Mongo Beti) a persona, a mouth-piece or other-self, who can conveniently and independently narrate and comment on the events of the plot. This persona, a university graduate and schoolmaster, has become alienated from the common people; he inveighs against their fickleness, and, ironically, while showing moral weakness himself, reviles them for their spinelessness in face of oppression. His creator fills him with righteous indignation towards a hopelessly corrupt political élite and a cynical people who recognise evil yet will not revolt against it. Yet he is as much an object of satire as everyone else. As we have seen, it is Achebe's view that the novelist can and must influence his society; and by using the persona device he can safely point a finger at the warts and sores on the face of contemporary society. Readers are immediately aware that this is the present-day Nigerian scene, that these are the ugly facts of West African life.

Unfortunately, this in itself is not a guarantee of good fiction. It is the illusion of life that fascinates us in great literature, not real life itself. We have the mass media—radio, television, and, above all, journalism—to give a plain account of real life; but the work of fiction is different, it must create, not copy. 'But who cares?' Achebe says, and the reply must be, 'Literary criticism cares'. One of the main strengths in Achebe's first three novels lay in his dispassionate detachment and in a style which recalled [Walter] Pater's remark that 'the true artist may be best recognised by his tact of omission'. He called up a world, stood away from it and left us to gaze on its details. Historically, of course, the use of a persona has normally guaranteed detachment, too, and writers as far apart as [Jonathan Swift, Joseph Conrad, J. D. Salinger, and Keith Waterhouse] have all used the device to devastating effect. But in Achebe's hands the technique is a failure…. Righteous indignation with a corrupt political élite is well enough; but as a primary aim in writing it is more in line with the tradition of the political tract than with the tradition of fiction. This is indeed the contemporary scene which Achebe is mirroring; these are real people he is drawing; but they are the 'real' people of journalism rather than those whom great authors create. (pp. 129-30)

In his anxiety to solve the present problems of his society, even if it means writing 'applied art' instead of 'pure', Achebe's artistry declines alarmingly. The teaching role suits him better; it has long roots in African tradition and makes demands on those qualities for which Achebe is distinguished. The good lesson requires minute preparation and painstaking presentation; it requires the voice of persuasive reasonableness and a care for consistency, above all, perhaps, impartiality. These are demands to which Achebe is remarkably well equipped to rise. Newcomers to satire, however, are apt to feel that its only requirements are white hot zeal and a loud voice; neophytes are apt simply to cry destruction and smash idols…. Satire, one suspects, has not enjoyed a long history in Africa; and for Achebe the absence of this kind of strength at his back has been disastrous. The prose is uneven. Its unsteady rhythm might well be taken as reflecting the turbulence of a committed and indignant spirit; but the effect is not artistic since there is little feeling of restraint. Success at the Swiftian saeva indignatio requires, above all else, control; in the heat of his moral tirade this is precisely what Achebe has lost. Much has been made of the rather prophetic close to A Man of the People: 'But the Army obliged us by staging a coup at that point and locking up every member of the Government'. It sounds suspiciously as though Achebe is suggesting a solution. It is not, generally speaking, the job of art to provide answers; art which does so simply moves towards propaganda.

The first three novels were enough to establish Achebe's superiority over such fellow writers as Onuora Nzekwu, T. M. Aluko, Nkem Nwankwo, and Cyprian Ekwensi. Not only did the novels display the quality of his literary skill; they illustrated the successful way in which he, unlike many of his colleagues, had faced up to, and largely solved, the literary problem modern African writers must tackle: how to write, in the metropolitan language, recognisably modern literature, which reflects contemporary mores and problems, and yet retains a large measure of cultural authenticity. As we have seen, Achebe met this problem in part by using the proverbial idiom of his people—one of the most ancient and protean teaching devices which his continent had to offer. One hopes that he will, eventually, return to a style of writing that uses still further the resources of the indigenous tradition. Then the decline represented by A Man of the People will be remedied and the work of journalism left to the journalists themselves. (pp. 130-31)