Civil peace chinua achebe ebook

The title also uses structure to suggest a certain continuity between Which sentence from the passage most closely identifies a mystery that is not fully explained? What does his reaction say about his character? Civil Peace study guide contains a biography of Chinua Achebe, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis. Civil Peace essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Civil Peace by Chinua Achebe.

Remember me. Forgot your password? Buy Study Guide. I'm sorry, you have not provided the passage in question. Which may leave some readers suggesting that during a war there is no justice. Institutes that an individual could rely on are no longer there.

If anything with war comes lawlessness. There is nobody to stop them. The country has yet to get back up on its feet. Another consequence of war. After war individuals are left to their own devices. Some people like Jonathan will successfully rebuild their lives while others will resort to criminal activity. The end of the story is also interesting as Achebe continues to explore the theme of optimism. This could be important as not only is Jonathan remaining optimistic but he is also accepting what has happened to him.

There is also a sense that Jonathan will not be beaten. The most important thing to Jonathan is his family and they have not been hurt by the thieves. He knows that he can start over again and that all he needs is time. The money becomes an irrelevancy. Something that is not important to Jonathan. Just as he rebuilt his life after the war the reader senses that likewise after being robbed by the thieves Jonathan will rebuild his life and business.

At all stages Jonathan remains calm knowing what is important family and what is not important. The reader is left with a feeling that no matter what happens to Jonathan he will overcome any obstacle that he faces. They have showed resilience throughout the story and will show further resilience in the future. Of course the doors and windows were missing and five sheets off the roof. But what was that? And anyhow he had returned to Enugu early enough to pick up bits of old zinc and wood and soggy sheets of cardboard lying around the neighbourhood before thousands more came out of their forest holes looking for the same things.

He got a destitute carpenter with one old hammer, a blunt plane and a few bent and rusty nails in his tool bag to turn this assortment of wood, paper and metal into door and window shutters for five Nigerian shillings or fifty Biafran pounds.

He paid the pounds, and moved in with his overjoyed family carrying five heads on their shoulders. His children picked mangoes near the military cemetery and sold them to soldiers' wives for a few pennies -- real pennies this time-and his wife started making breakfast akara balls for neighbours in a hurry to start life again.

With his family earnings he took his bicycle to the villages around and bought fresh palm-wine which he mixed generously in his rooms with the water which had recently started running again in the public tap down the road, and opened up a bar for soldiers and other lucky people with good money. At first he went daily, then every other day and finally once a week, to the offices of the Coal Corporation where he used to be a miner, to find out what was what.

The only thing he did find out in the end was that that little house of his was even a greater blessing than he had thought. Some of his fellow ex-miners who had nowhere to return at the end of the day's. As the weeks lengthened and still nobody could say what was what Jonathan discontinued his weekly visits altogether and faced his palm-wine bar. But nothing puzzles God. Came the day of the windfall when after five days of endless scuffles in queues and counter- queues in the sun outside the Treasury he had twenty pounds counted into his palms as ex-gratia award for the rebel money he had turned in.

It was like Christmas for him and for many others like him when the payments began. They called it since few could manage its proper official name egg-rasher. As soon as the pound notes were placed in his palm Jonathan simply closed it tight over them and buried fist and money inside his trouser pocket. He had to be extra careful because he had seen a man a couple of days earlier collapse into near-madness in an instant before that oceanic crowd because no sooner had he got his twenty pounds than some heartless ruffian picked it off him.

Though it was not right that a man in such an extremity of agony should be blamed yet many in the queues that day were able to remark quietly at the victim's carelessness, especially after he pulled out the innards of his pocket and revealed a hole in it big enough to pass a thief's head. But of course he had insisted that the money had been in the other pocket, pulling it out too to show its comparative wholeness. So one had to be careful. Jonathan soon transferred the money to his left hand and pocket so as to leave his right free for shaking hands should the need arise, though by fixing his gaze at such an elevation as to miss all approaching human faces he made sure that the need did not arise, until he got home.

He was normally a heavy sleeper but that night he heard all the neighbourhood noises die down one after another. Even the night watchman who knocked the hour on some metal somewhere in the distance had fallen silent after knocking one o'clock' That must have been the last thought in Jonathan's mind before he was finally carried away himself.

He couldn't have been gone for long, though, when he was violently awakened again. The second time the knocking came it was so loud and imperious that the rickety old door could have fallen down.

We are lost! We are dead! Neighbours, are you asleep? Wake up! This went on for a long time and then stopped suddenly. Perhaps they had scared the thief away. There was total silence. But only for a short while. Oya, everybody! Jonathan and his family were now completely paralysed by terror. Maria and the children sobbed inaudibly like lost souls. Jonathan groaned continuously.