[BEN seizes the tube and flings GUS away. He follows GUS and slaps him hard, back-handed, across the chest.] BEN Stop it! You maniac! GUS But you heard! BEN [Savagely.] That's enough! I'm warning you! [Silence. BEN hangs the tube. He goes to his bed and lies down. He picks up his paper and reads. Silence. The box goes up. They turn quickly, their eyes meet, BEN turns to his paper. Slowly GUS goes back to his bed, and sits. Silence. The hatch falls back into place. They turn quickly, their eyes meet, BEN turns back to his paper. Silence. BEN throws his paper down.] BEN Kaw! [He picks up the paper and looks at it.]
Listen to this!
[Pause. ]
What about that, eh?
[Pause.] Kaw!
[Pause.] Have you ever heard such a thing? GUS [Dully.] Go on! BEN It's true. GUS Get away. BEN It's down here in black and white. GUS [Very low.] Is that a fact? BEN Can you imagine it. GUS It's unbelievable. BEN It's enough to make you want to puke, isn't it? GUS [Almost inaudible.] Incredible.
[BEN shakes his head. He puts the paper down and rises. He fixes the revolver in his holster.
GUS stands up. He goes towards the door on the left.] BEN Where are you going? GUS I'm going to have a glass of water.
[He exits, BEN brushes dust off his clothes and shoes. The whistle in the speaking tube hlows. He goes to it, takes the whistle out and puts the tube to his ear. He listens. He puts it to his mouth. ]
BEN Yes.
[To ear. He listens. To mouth.]
Straight away. Right.
[To ear. He listens. To mouth.]
Sure we're ready.
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262 2 / CHINUA ACHEBE
[To ear. He listens. To mouth.]
Understood. Repeat. He has arrived and will be coming in straight away. The normal method to be employed. Understood. [To ear. He listens. To mouth.] Sure we're ready. [To ear. He listens. To mouth.] Right.
[He hangs the tube up. ]
Gus!
[He takes out a comh and combs his hair, adjusts his jacket to diminish the bidge of the revolver. The lavatory flushes off left, BEN goes quickly to the door, left.]
Gus! [The door right opens sharply, BEN turns, his revolver leveled at the door. GUS stumbles in.
He is stripped of his jacket, waistcoat, tie, holster, and revolver. He stops, body stooping, his arms at his sides. He raises his head and looks at BEN. A long silence. They stare at each other.]
CURTAIN
1960
CHINUA ACHEBE
b. 1930 The most celebrated African novelist is Chinua Achebe, whose Things Fall Apart (1958) permanently transformed the landscape of African fiction, both in his own continent and in the Western imagination. His novels, while steadfastly refusing to sentimentalize their Nigerian subjects, effectively challenged many of the West's entrenched impressions of African life and culture, replacing simplistic stereotypes with portrayals of a complex society still suffering from a legacy of Western colonial oppression.
Achebe was born in Ogidi, an Igbo-speaking town in eastern Nigeria, and educated? in English?at church schools and University College, Ibadan, where he subsequently taught (briefly) before joining the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation in Lagos. He was director of external broadcasting from 1961 to 1966, and then launched a publishing company with Christopher Okigbo, a poet soon to die in the Nigerian civil war (1967?70). After the war Achebe taught in the United States, before returning for a time to the University of Nigeria at Nsukka. Since 1990 Achebe has been Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard College.
A volume of Achebe's poems was joint winner of the Commonwealth Poetry Prize in 1972. He also has written short stories and essays, including an attack on corruption in Nigerian politics, The Trouble with Nigeria (1983). A more famous attack of another kind, his essay 'An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness,' is a vigorous polemic that accuses Conrad of racism, while perhaps deflecting attention from Achebe's debt to his Polish-born precursor. Achebe is best-known for his
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CHINUA ACHEBE / 262 3
novels, however: Things Fall Apart (1958), No Longer at Ease (1960), Arrow of God (1964), A Man of the People (1966), and Anthills of the Savannah (1987). The first of these is a response to Joyce Cary's Mr. Johnson (1939), a novel famous in its day for its depiction of Nigerian tribal society. Cary had been a British district officer in Nigeria, and his account of the life and tragic death of a young African clerk, although well meaning, was written from an outsider's patronizing perspective. By contrast, Achebe's Things Fall Apart, written with an insider's understanding of the African world and its history, depicts the destruction of an individual, a family, and a culture at the moment of colonial incursion. This novel's hero, Okonkwo, is dignified and courageous, a noble figure, whereas Cary's Mr. Johnson is charming but undignified. Like other tragic heroes, however, Okonkwo is flawed and falls through lack of the balance everywhere celebrated in Achebe's writings.
Taking his title from W. B. Yeats's poem 'The Second Coming,' Achebe shows how 'the blood-dimmed tide is
