ABSTRACT
All five of Chinua Achebe’s novels are in the tragic mode, with No Longer at Ease, although a tragedy of dead infant hopes, frequently treated as having lesser magnitude. Despite the drastic changes of fortune in these sequences, however, they do bear witness that tragedy does not necessarily connote pessimism. What is more, Hegel makes a strong case that tragedy has justification in the ‘higher outlook’ which must be part of the entailment of catharsis. Such a higher outlook is directly enacted in the final movements of Anthills of the Savannah.
