The purpose of this article is to analyze the short story “Civil Peace” by the Nigerian writer, Chinua Achebe, in the light of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The story happens in Nigeria, which has a long history of being colonized by English troops till 1960, when the Nigerians eventually gained their independence. Achebe uses English language as a postcolonial tool to defend his people. The story “Civil Peace” opens right after the Civil War and ends after so much blood shedding and brutality. This long-term history of pain and oppression internalizes victims' self devaluation with constant sense of insecurity under which circumstances, according to Abraham Maslow, the difficulty in meeting basic “deficiency needs” creates a constant tension
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He has been given the language as it has been the colonizers’ legacy and the country’s official language. He uses it in order to carry his message to more audience around the world. By transforming syntax and word usage, he has invented a new form of English, a Nigerian English dialect to show the bicultural heritage of his nation. He uses the foreign vehicle to carry the familiar domestic message.
“Civil Peace” is one of his greatest short stories, which first published in 1972. It starts right after Nigerian Civil War. The protagonist, Jonathan Iwegbu, has survived with his wife and three out of four children. He tries to reconstruct his life. By finding his bicycle and using it as taxi, he can afford some money to travel to Enugu, where he finds out that his house is still standing. They move back home and the family try to make more money. He gets 20 pounds as “egg rasher” by exchange and although he is so discreet, the thieves steal the money. Life goes on as it was.
Along with ‘Civil Peace’, the tales ‘Sugar Baby’ and ‘Girls in War’ form Achebe’s masterful trilogy of short stories that is set during and immediately after the Nigerian Civil War…All three probe the experience, roots, and legacy of war, rather than question of who was at fault. (Lynn
He has been given the language as it has been the colonizers’ legacy and the country’s official language. He uses it in order to carry his message to more audience around the world. By transforming syntax and word usage, he has invented a new form of English, a Nigerian English dialect to show the bicultural heritage of his nation. He uses the foreign vehicle to carry the familiar domestic message.
“Civil Peace” is one of his greatest short stories, which first published in 1972. It starts right after Nigerian Civil War. The protagonist, Jonathan Iwegbu, has survived with his wife and three out of four children. He tries to reconstruct his life. By finding his bicycle and using it as taxi, he can afford some money to travel to Enugu, where he finds out that his house is still standing. They move back home and the family try to make more money. He gets 20 pounds as “egg rasher” by exchange and although he is so discreet, the thieves steal the money. Life goes on as it was.
Along with ‘Civil Peace’, the tales ‘Sugar Baby’ and ‘Girls in War’ form Achebe’s masterful trilogy of short stories that is set during and immediately after the Nigerian Civil War…All three probe the experience, roots, and legacy of war, rather than question of who was at fault. (Lynn