Theme

I'm not sure about love being a theme more than sex. Sexual tension pervades No Longer at Ease, but its expression is muted as one would expect in a novel written in the late 1950s. Several of young Obi Okonkwo's male friends are sexually active. Joseph divides his one-room flat with a blanket and declares his bed a "Holy of Holies". He remarks with some amazement that his girlfriend Joy had been a virgin when they meet; the next day, Obi wanders the city to give Joseph and his trashy new girlfriend privacy. While riding a lorry home, Obi thinks erotic thoughts in English, because his early training in Ibo censors such words. Falling asleep in his childhood bed, he wishes he were pressed against girlfriend Clara Okeke's body. Obi thinks about how, with earlier girls (Nigerian, West Indian, and English), he is always aware of a superior part of himself watching the passion and dismissing the idea, but with Clara it is different. He cannot understand why she accepts the nonsense that being an osu prevents their marrying. The President of the UPU warns from experience that Lagos' "sweetness" causes many young people to perish and says social pioneers must deny themselves pleasures like drinking or running with women.