Mauricio Mbomio

Instructor Anna Mikhalova

English 102 section 066 Spring 2008

April 8, 2008

TOPIC PROPOSAL FOR ESSAY #3

The short story I have chosen for essay 3 is Civil Peace by Chinua Achebe. I found that short story very interesting and according to what the essay’s requirements are I think that short story can be a good one to analyze in a historical and cultural context. This topic is also particularly important to me because is talking about the war, it does not mean that I like war or something but it is just to see and learn where the world is coming from and to thank God for not having been part of anyways. I can imagine myself being involved in a war conflict and living the kind of life described in the story.

The short story is connected to the civil war in Nigeria in the late sixty’s. When I read a few articles about that civil war, I was able to know a lot of things that were not mentioned in the short story. For example, the articles helped me know what originated the war and what was one of it consequences. Also by searching the author’s background, I realized that he or part of his family might have been involved in the war conflict since he belongs to one of the tribes that were actively involved in the war. The theme of the work is a soldier (Jonathan) whose life, in my opinion, exemplifies the kind of life people lived the years after war. The war itself was over but people were still attacked by thieves and groups of bandits who wanted to take their money and possessions away and I guess those actions have to do a lot with the title of the story, Civil Peace. It looks like folks are used those actions because in the end it does not seem to bather Jonathan at all, instead, he said it was nothing for him because everything else had gone with the war as well.

Of course there are aspects of the poem that are not clear to me. For instance, the Biafran money, what role did it play during the war? Obviously people wanted to get rid of it for some reasons. Also my assumption about Jonathan’s life representing the way folks lived after war might not be credible if we consider that he was a soldier therefore, a potential target for thieves and rebels. So I would like to investigate the kind of life that normal people (not soldiers) lived after the civil war whether they were attacked as well.