When the story begins the author Achebe chooses to start it off with Jonathan Iwegbu counting his blessings. "Happy survival.... He had come out of the war with five inestimable blessings-his head, his wife Maria's head, and the heads of three of their four children. As a bonus he also had his old bicycle". I believe the reader gets a little incite to what the theme is based upon especially after the story is read a couple of times. He is basically saying how material things are not that important, even though he is just getting back from war. He still maintains a positive outlook on his life and he still has his family and his bike. One thing that seemed odd to me when I first read the story was

As the story is coming to a close he winds up getting robbed. This is an example of his life being on a down at that time, but he doesn't give up. In the last paragraph after being robbed and being forced to give up his money for the life of his family he says, "I count it as nothing...what is egg-rasher? Did I depend on it last week? Or is it greater than other things that went with the war? I say, let egg-rasher perish in the flames! Let it go where everything else has gone. Nothing puzzles god". This reminds me of the cliche everything happens for a reason. Everything was going so well for him his house was standing, he was making good money being a taxi with his bike. I also feel that Jonathan looks at it that way also. He says let the egg rasher perish in anger, but then he says nothing puzzles god right after it, kind of like everything happens for a reason.

I can also see how this can be a classical example of the consequences of greed, especially in the middle of the story he clinches his fist around the twenty pounds he received that day, and avoids eye contact with anyone because he feared interaction with

Some common words found in the essay are:
Jonathan Iwegbu, Chinua Achebe, , puzzles god, happens reason, couple times, makes jonathan, story couple, reason sometimes, life family,
Approximate Word count = 772
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)