Obi Character Analysis

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Indeed, Achebe’s saying is proven right; as shall be seen through the experience of Obi who as an individual of the modern society and a member of the traditional one gets trapped between two pulling forces that cause his identity crisis. Obi has suffered the most amongst the other characters due to his up-bringing in an Igbo society and a Christian family. This has set the grounds to cultivate his composed identity; his Christian up-bringing rebutted tradition and at the same time authentified it. Obi grew-up in a Christian family which led him to face some embarrassing situations with his classmates and neighbors in Umuofia; the folktale story which he did not know and the refusal of food from the heathens, somehow alienated him and…show more content…
He was successful in elementary school where he passed at the top of his examinations. He had won a scholarship to the best secondary school in eastern Nigeria and passed the Cambridge School Certificate with distinction too. Apart from his great and honorable school career, he was also an obstinate young boy. He wrote once a support letter to Hitler that almost got him into trouble if his age did not save him. He was in fact a very intelligent boy from very young age. His distinctive wit and advanced grades put his name at the top of Umuofians’ talk, and also secured him a scholarship to study in England, without any rivals he was an obvious choice for Umuofians. As soon as he gets his western education, he is regarded as a hero of great knowledge and promise in his homeland. All the burdens of hope of Umuofians are put on his shoulders to improve the situation in the village. Obi is also known as a man of value and pious; virtues that both his Christian and Igbo backgrounds have granted him. On his first arrival to Lagos, Obi sees strange things in Joseph’s flat. The pillows with the word ‘OSCULATE’ sewn on it, as he compares it to the pillow-slips with a delicate floral design made by his sister Esther in Umuofia; he is surprised and shocked of how audacious people in the urban side have become, and all what he witnessed there has left a ‘nasty taste’ on his mouth. We can clearly state from here that Obi

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