Analyse "Civil Peace" based on various theories of literary criticism.

The easiest way to answer this question would be to appeal
to postcolonialism as a way to analyse this excellent short story. Clearly, Chinua
Achebe is an author who is famed for being a postcolonial author based on the way that
he writes about the realities of African localities both during and after colonial rule.
This story, and the way that it presents us with how one family is impacted by the chaos
and incredible instability that plagues Nigeria after its independence, comments
directly upon colonialism and in particular the anarchic legacy that it left behind in
so many different countries, Nigeria being just one of them. The way that the story
refers to violence, wars and soldiers is just one indication of the way that the
realities of independence were very brutal and violent for people such as Jonathan. Note
too the words that the thieves say that give the story its
title:

Now
make we talk business. We no be bad tief. We no like for make trouble. Trouble done
finish. War done finish and all the katakata wey de for inside. No Civil War again. This
time na Civil Peace. No be
so?

The way that the thieves
are able to take Jonathan's money with impunity and Jonathan clearly has no way of ever
getting it back points towards the grim realities of independence and the kind of
anarchy and chaos that European powers left in their wake.