Civil Peace

“Happy survival!’ meant so much more to him than just a current fashion of greeting old friends in the first hazy days of peace. It went deep to his heart. He had come out of the war with five inestimable blessings—his head, his wife Maria’s head, and the heads of three out of their four children. As a bonus, he also had his old bicycle—a miracle too but naturally not to be compared to the safety of five human heads.”

Achebe opens his story by showing Jonathan’s grateful attitude after the war. While he lost his youngest child, he survived with his wife and three children. Each life saved is a blessing that “went deep to his heart.” His gratitude for his bicycle, referring to it as a miracle, shows his humility before God. Jonathan accepts there are some things over which he has no control. He will accept the losses of what he cannot control and focus on the future of what he can control. This passage foreshadows that the bicycle will play a pivotal role in the survival of his family. While it is a “miracle” that the bicycle survived, Jonathan’s resourcefulness, hard work, and self-reliance allow him to develop his small business plans and earn a living.

“The bicycle had a little history of its own.”

The bicycle represents the material history of civilians during the war. Jonathan almost loses the bike during the war and buries it in the graveyard where his child is buried. The bicycle carries the history of war and postwar society. It survived, but it requires Jonathan’s ingenuity to become useful again in the present and future. It was a material object of war that is now part of the new postwar society, which Jonathan will use for his family’s survival.