Liminality and the Problem of Becoming: Re-interrogating the Character of Obi Okonkwo in Achebe's No Longer at Ease

Abstract Obi Okonkwo in Achebe’s No Longer at Ease is a spectacular character whose logic of actions has been probed at different layers of the text by many scholars. Views are almost unanimous in their opinion that Obi’s non-conformist stance is a result of his European educational experience. If this is so, one will be left to wonder why Christopher, another character with a similar experience, does not have the same disposition as Obi in relation to the mainstream life of Ụmụọfia society. His ambivalence, therefore calls for a new mode of investigation, which this research undertakes. The research isolates Obi as a character lodged in a liminal space, whose non-conformism/ambivalence, it argues, is not a result of European education as such, but a case of his liminality. Thus, Homi Bhabha’s concept of “liminality”, which presupposes that “individuals in liminal spaces experience definitional ambiguity in that they are no longer classified as what they were but are not yet classified as what they are becoming,” is employed alongside his notion of “unhomeliness” to account for Obi’s situation in the text. This will establish Obi as a liminal character, whose identity is in process of becoming, and only attains stability with the completion of his cycle of liminality.