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Transcription: [00:08:28]
{SPEAKER name="Eldred Jones"}
and by a lucky accident, he catches hold of himself.
{SPEAKER name="Brooks B. Robinson"}
mmm hmmm [[affirmative]]
[00:08:33]
{SPEAKER name="Eldred Jones"}
and turns against the minister and goes into opposition as well to fight against the minister, but the important thing is that his Achilles' heel had been exposed only because he and the minister clashed over the possession of his girlfriend
[00:08:50]
did he suddenly take himself in hand, and I think again there's a great moral lesson to be learned there
[00:08:59]
and one sees the difference between mouthing slogans and taking idealistic positions.
[00:09:08]
and really the contrast between that and the cost of holding on to such positions. So in these four novels, I think Achebe has examined the
[00:09:24]
Igbo situation, the Nigerian situation, the African situation you might say,
[00:09:28]
in quite a number of different perspectives and together they make quite a formidable literary output.
[00:09:37]
{SPEAKER name="Brooks B. Robinson"}
Now you talk about in the first 3 novels in the end in the final analyses, the major characters are defeated
[00:09:46]
And this final, the fourth novel, is the character in the final analysis successful?
[00:09:52]
{SPEAKER name="Eldred Jones"}
In the, in the -- no, he is not. He's not really successful in the sense that his party is defeated.
[00:10:02]
and he himself comes out of the novel very badly
[00:10:05]
because there's a coup, a military coup, and that novel -- the publication of that novel just predated the military -- the actual military coup in Nigeria by a matter of weeks.
[00:10:19]
In fact, there was a time when people thought that Achebe must have known there was a coup coming.
[00:10:24]
[[Brooke R. Robinson chuckles]]
[00:10:25]
{SPEAKER name="Eldred Jones"}
but in fact, it was a good way of rounding off the novel.
[00:10:30]
And it happened also to be true to life. In fact, what one might