Transcript File - AS LITERATURE

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
I wanted to write characters who are driven by
impulses that they may not always be consciously
aware of, which I think is true for us human beings.
Besides, I didn't want to bore my reader—and myself—
to death, exploring the characters' every thought.
Narrative Style
The pendular movement
of the narrative is most
effective as it becomes a
device which draws
parallels and creates
contrasts, which imply the
physical, mental and
emotional changes the
characters endure.
The story is told through three different points of view:
 Ugwu, a young teenage boy who represents the people of
the outlying villages and whose tribe clings to a more
traditional, tribal way of life;
 Olanna, the daughter of well-to-do city-dwellers; and
 Richard, a white expatriate originally from England, who falls
in love with Olanna's twin sister Kainene.
Narrative Purpose
Adichie unravels the realities of war beginning with the
physical and literal before delving into the psycho-logical
and emotional facets. She frames the explosion of the
North-South conflict as a pivotal moment that does not just
offer historical context but functions as a stepping stone into
the psychological and emotional effects of war on
individuals, relationships, ethnic groups and the nation as a
whole.
This novel is an expression of polyphony on the Nigerian
Civil War. Adichie goes beyond historical research and
travels deep into Nigeria’s memory, going into the roots of
the conflict, into the injustice, violence and pain of war and
into the irrelevance of humanity amidst these conditions.
As a result of this humanity, there is a rare emotional truth in
the sexual scenes—from Ugwu's adolescent forays and the
mature couples' passions, to the ugliness of rape.
This tug of detachment and intimacy
gives Half of a Yellow Sun an
empathetic tone that never
succumbs to simple impulses. Even
her most honorable characters
possess humanizing flaws. Adichie
understands that novels, above all
war novels, cannot easily survive a
rush to judgment. Therefore, she
takes us into the minds of both a
gang-raped bar girl and the oncetender teenage soldier who
eventually becomes her assailant.
Reaching deep, she finds a “hard
clot of fear inside him” at “the casual
cruelty of this new world,” a cruelty
in which he becomes incrementally
complicit.
Conflict
Political Tension
An obvious political tension
frames the beginning of the novel.
We are introduced to the Igbo,
Hausa, and Yoruba tribes and to
ideas like Pan-Africanism and
decolonizing.
The first chapter is told through
Ugwu’s perspective who is
Odenigbo’s 13 year-old
houseboy. Odenigbo enrolls Ugwu
in the staff primary school
because “Education is a priority!
How can we resist exploitation if
we don’t have the tools to
understand exploitation?” (13).
Who is doing the exploiting?
Exposition
Ugwu has little experience
with English or politics, and
his experiences listening to
his Master’s conversations
with houseguests gives
readers an introduction to
the politics of Nigeria
around the 60’s.
The second narrator is introduced in the first
chapter. Odenigbo calls Olanna “nkem”
meaning “my own.” She is sexualized from the
very beginning: “She should be in a glass case
like the one in Master’s study, where people
could admire her curvy, fleshy body, where she
would be preserved untainted” (29).
The second chapter begins with her preparing
to board a plane to return home before moving
in with Odenigbo. Her description of him is much
different than that of Ugwu’s. She repeatedly
describes him as confident. Thus, we see a
different side of him aside from just Ugwu’s
“Master.”
A focus on class emerges in a flashback to when
Olanna and Odenigbo first meet. He reprimands
a ticket seller for being racist against his own
people (35).
There is also a focus on class which is often shown
through the accents and dialects of various
characters (34).
Olanna is continually sexualized throughout her narrative; her
parents even use her as “sex bait.”
Her previous boyfriend’s mother saw her as “the Igbo woman
[Mohammed] wanted to marry who would taint the lineage with
infidel blood.” After talking with Arize it becomes apparent that
Mohammed is Hausa. This is an obvious reference to the tension
between tribes. Mohammed calls her a “bush woman” for not
wearing a wig.
She is distant with her immediate family but seems to feel more
at home with her uncle and aunt. Olanna seems ashamed by
her parents when in Kano with her uncle and aunt: “The
artificiality of her parents’ relationship always seemed harder,
more shaming, when she was here in Kano.”
The chapter ends with Olanna trying to deal with Miss
Adebayo who treats her as unintelligent despite her Master’s
degree and stating that she does not want to marry Odenigbo
for fear that it might ruin their relationship.
Discussion Questions
1. Ugwu is only thirteen when he begins working as a
houseboy for Odenigbo, but he is one of the most intelligent
and observant characters in the novel. How well does Ugwu
manage the transition from village life to the intellectual and
privileged world of his employers? How does his presence
throughout affect the reader’s experience of the story?
2. About her attraction to Odenigbo, Olanna
thinks, “The intensity had not abated after two
years, nor had her awe at his self-assured
eccentricities and his fierce moralities.” What is
attractive about Odenigbo? How does Adichie
poke fun at certain aspects of his character? How
does the war change him?
3. Adichie touches very lightly on a connection between
the Holocaust and the Biafran situation; why does she not
stress this parallel more strongly? Why are the Igbo
massacred by the Hausa? What tribal resentments and
rivalries are expressed in the Nigerian-Biafran war? In what
ways does the novel make clear that these rivalries have
been intensified by British interference?
4. Consider the conversation between Olanna
and Kainene on pp. 130-131. What are the
sources of the distance and distrust between the
two sisters?
5. Discuss the ways in which
Adichie reveals the
differences in social class
among her characters. What
are the different cultural
assumptions—about
themselves and others—
made by educated Africans
like Odenigbo, nouveau
riche Africans like Olanna’s
parents, uneducated
Africans like Odenigbo’s
mother, and British
expatriates like Richard’s exgirlfriend Susan?