It might be interesting to examine the way the title is reflected in Obi's conflicts throughout this work. Why, exactly, is he uneasy? What causes his discomfort?

It is also often helpful to structure your thesis in a way that organizes your paper. I often advise students to build three main points into their thesis and to have each of those main points become a body paragraph.

Using this structure, a thesis for No Longer at Ease might look something like this:

The unease Obi experiences in the novel is created by economic hardship, divided loyalties, and unforeseen tragedies.

From the beginning, Obi experiences economic hardship. He is in debt because of his education and can't manage to get ahead. Early on, he holds tightly to his values and refuses to accept bribes to award scholarships. Yet the tension of debt impacts his relationship with Clara, making it more difficult for him to marry an osu.

Obi also struggles with a sense of divided loyalty between people, particularly Clara and his mother. His mother places Obi in a particularly impossible position when she vows to kill herself if he marries Obi. On the other hand, he is engaged to Clara, who he discovers is pregnant. The inner turmoil of this conflict adds to Obi's unease.

Unforeseen tragedies also create a growing sense of unease. Obi falls in love with an osu, whose position is unacceptable to his family. Clara becomes pregnant, and neither she nor Obi want a baby, because the conflict with his mother creates a barrier in their relationship. Clara suffers complications following an abortion and can't receive visitors because she is too ill. When Obi returns to work, he learns that his mother has died; his mind spirals into growing turmoil, and he opts not to go home for her funeral. Obi faces numerous unforeseen tragedies that increase his inner instability.

In your conclusion, you could examine how these various points of unease contribute to a character who finds himself on trial for accepting bribes, proving that he has greatly changed from the man who refused bribes early in the book and before his various conflicts.

Write a thesis statement about No Longer at Ease. State your topic. Your topic is the essential idea of your paper. State your main idea about this topic. Give reasons that support your main idea. Include an opposing viewpoint to your main idea, if applicable.

To help you get started on this essay about Chinua Achebe's No Longer at Ease, let's brainstorm some possible topics, thesis statements, reasons, and opposing viewpoints.

You might focus on the topic of corruption and think about what can drive a person like Obi into accepting bribes and turning his back on the high ideals he has set for himself. You could argue that Obi's will becomes weakened by the hardships he faces and is not able to deal with properly. The weaker his will becomes, the more susceptible he is to corruption. After he procures an abortion for Clara, Obi's whole character changes. He has not lived up to his responsibility in this situation. He has given in to the "easy way out" once, and now, he is more prone to doing so again. An opposing viewpoint to this thesis and line of reasoning might be that Clara is also involved in the choice of the abortion, yet you could counter that perhaps she wouldn't even have thought about it if Obi had not forced the issue.

Alternately, you might concentrate on the changing views of tradition. Obi doesn't care that Clara is osu, an outcast, and therefore cannot marry him, at least according the customs of their people. You could argue that ignoring this custom and others leads to Obi's downfall for reasons that he loses the support of his parents and weakens his relationship with Clara. Obi's lack of respect for the traditions of his people hardens him, and people lose respect for him because of his actions.

An opposing viewpoint here might argue that Obi is right to assume a more modern view, for the old customs are not based on reason, but you could respond that Obi ought to be meeting his people where they are rather than setting himself above them.