I.S.F.

D N°97 “Almafuerte”

Profesorado de Inglés

Language and Culture II

“IF THE SUN REFUSES TO RISE,

WE WILL MAKE IT RISE “

Biafran War and its scars

Profesora : Patricia Guzmán

Alumna : Gonzalez Gricelda

2018

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 How much did one know of the true

feelings of those who did not have a voice?

(Adichie, 2006, p. 250)

In an interview for Socialist Review, Chimamanda Adichie expresses about her book Half of

a Yellow Sun that “it is not just about people thrown into a war where we watch them die. It is

about people who have full lives and how war changes them” (Charlie Kimber interviews

Chimamanda Adichie about Half of a Yellow Sun ,2006) The purpose of this paper is to analyze

the physical, psychological and emotional effects of the Nigerian- Biafran Civil War on

individuals, relationships, ethnic groups and the nation as a whole.

Half of a Yellow Sun was written by Chimamanda Adichie. She was born in Enugu, Nigeria

in 1977, seven years after the Nigeria-Biafra War ended. She grew up in Nsukka, in the south-

eastern part of the country. Adichie herself and her family were involved and suffered the cruelty

of the war: “ because I lost both grandfathers in the Nigeria-Biafra war, … because my father has

tears in his eyes when he speaks of losing his father, because my mother still cannot speak at

length about losing her father in a refugee camp, because the brutal bequests of colonialism make

me angry, because the thought of the egos and indifference of men leading to the unnecessary

deaths of men and women and children enrages me, because I don’t ever want to

forget”.(Adichie, The Story Behind the Book)

The Nigerian-Biafran War began on 6th July 1967, seven years after Nigeria gained

independence from Britain and ended on 12th January 1970. It started with Biafran´s desire to

break away from the Nigerian state. The Igbo people had been one of the three biggest ethnic

groups to be subsumed into Nigeria, along with the Hausa-Fulani and Yoruba people. They had

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strong nationalist aspirations and they did not want to coexist with the Northern-dominated

federal government. This Eastern Region of Nigeria seceded and declared itself the Republic of

Biafra. The civil conflict led to more than two million casualties, mainly from starvation and

disease. Most of the casualties were from the Biafran side.

Britain and the Soviet Union were the main supporters of the Nigerian government in Lagos,

while France, Israel and some other countries supported Biafra until it ceased to exist as an

independent state in January 1970 when they were defeated by the Nigerian militia. (Nwankwo)

The story was published in 2006. It is set in Nigeria, and in its 37 chapters, divided in four

parts, the author deals with two periods, the early 60s and the late 60s, to immerse the reader in

the lives of Ugwu, who comes from the village of Opi to become the houseboy of Odenigbo’, a

revolutionary mathematics professor, Olanna and Kainene, chief Ozobia´s twin daughters who

are very different from each other and Richard , an English journalist who comes to Nigeria

attracted by the ancient Igbo-Ukwu art.

The title of the novel alludes to the Biafra´s flag, which is made up of half of a yellow sun

over stripes of red, black and green. Olanna explains to her class the meaning of it: “Red was the

blood of the siblings massacred in the North, black was for mourning them, green was for the

prosperity Biafra would have, and, finally, the half of a yellow sun stood for the glorious future”

(Adichie, 2006,281)

The characters live traumatic experiences that make them change and which they have to

struggle with. The cruel and vivid images and scenes of the war affect not only them but also

the reader.

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 Olanna is the first one who is shocked when she witnesses the dead mutilated bodies of her

family members Arize, Aunty Ifeka, and Uncle Mbaezi “ Uncle Mbaezi lay face down in an

ungainly twist, legs splayed (…) Aunty Ifeka lay on the veranda. The cuts of her naked body

were smaller, dotting her arms and legs like slightly parted red lips”. (Adichie, p.147)

Then when she is escaping on the train to Nsukka , she faces another appalling situation

when she sees a woman carrying her daughter’s head in a calabash.

‘Come and take a look.’ She opened the calabash. ‘Take a look,’ she said again. Olanna

looked into the bowl. She saw the little girl’s head with the ashy-grey skin and plaited hair and

rolled-back eyes and open mouth. She stared at it for a while before she looked away. Somebody

screamed. The woman closed the calabash. ‘Do you know,’ she said, ‘it took me so long to plait

this hair? She had such thick hair.’ (Adichie, p. 149)

Those episodes traumatized her so much that she is paralyzed physically and mentally for

several weeks. She also suffers from Dark Swoops, temporary madness: “That night, she had

the first Dark Swoop : a thick blanket descended from above and pressed itself over her face,

firmly, while she struggled to breathe.‟ (Adichie , p.156)

Kainene also suffers the brutality and the inhumanity of the conflict when she deals with the

death of her steward, Ikejide, beheaded before her eyes during an air raid. This terrible picture

torments her and she keeps having nightmares. Every morning, she wakes up “and remembered

his running headless body.” (Adichie, p. 344) “The body was running, arched slightly forward,

arms flying around, but there was no head. There was only a bloodied neck. (Adichie, p. 317)

Odenigbo has to face the murder of her stubborn mother who refuses to leave the village and

he is not the same man since that day. He is devastated by her death. He gets depressed and he

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starts drinking a lot, wasting in the bar the money he earns. “But he no longer went into the

interior with the Agitator Corps, no longer returned with lit-up eyes. Instead, he went to Tanzania

bar every day and came back with a taciturn set to his mouth”. (Adichie, p. 322)

Another character who is touched by the war is Richard. He is astonished at the airport when

a custom officer called Nnaemeka is shot by soldiers because he is Igbo: “ … he willed

something, anything, to happen in the stifling silence and as if in answer to his thoughts, the rifle

went off and Nnaemeka´s chest blew open, a splattering red mass, and Richard dropped the note

in his hand. (Adichie, p.153) He was so impressed by the officer´s death that he decides to pay a

condolence visit to his family. Nigerian soldiers killed many people at the airport that day and

that was something that Richard would keep in his mind forever.

“He had often wished that he would lose his mind, or that his memory would suppress itself,

but instead everything took on a terrible transparence and he had only to close his eyes to see the

freshly dead bodies on the floor of the airport and to recall the pitch of the screams. His mind

remained lucid. (Adichiem, p.165)

Ugwu´s traumatic situation is different from the others; it happens by the end of the war,

when he is conscripted. He rapes a bar girl; he has to show his masculinity in front of the others:

“She was dry and tense when he entered her. He did not look at her face, or at the man pinning

her down, or at anything at all as he moved quickly and felt his own climax ... a self-loathing

release.” (Adichie, p.365) He wants to forget but he cannot get over it. “He could not remember

her features, but the look in her eyes stayed with him, as did the tense, dryness between her legs,

the way he had done what he had not wanted to do.‟ (Adichie, p.397)

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 War affects relationships, too. At the beginning of the story Olanna and Kainene are not

close. “Olanna wished she still had those flashes, moments when she could tell Kainene what she

was thinking.” (Adichie, p. 31) Referring to her family, Olanna wonders: “why were all strangers

who shared the same last name? (Adichie, 219)

The tension between the sisters deepens when Olanna has sex with Richard, Kainene´s lover.

She does not forgive Olanna and she decides not to talk or see her.

However, the war makes Kainene look for her sister and forgive her because they share the

same suffering. Love and family loyalty overcome betrayal. They get together and closer than

they have ever had. Olanna moves with her sibling and she helps her in the refugee camps. “And

the tension he (Richard) had expected, the weight of memory and regret that would come with

seeing Olanna again in her presence were absent”. (Adichie, p. 375)

Kainene says to Olanna “There are some things that are so unforgivable that they make other

things easily forgivable.” (Adichie, p.347 ) “…they created their own world that Master and Mr.

Richard could never quite enter:” (Adichie, p. 399)

Biafra people were the most devastated as the war progresses. Living situations get worse not

only for the villagers but also for the main characters that have seen better times. Food and

money run out. Violence, fear, death, starvation, and chaos are a part of everyday life. Children

chasing lizards or eating roasting rats and dogs , girls raped and got pregnant by soldiers and

Father Marcel, a priest working at Kainene’s refugee camp, bony bodies fainting of dehydration

and famine, a terrible kwashiorkor epidemic disease and hundreds of dead people take the reader

to a tragic journey where the boundaries among history, literature and reality blur .

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 “About twelve people were lying on bamboo beds, on mats, on the floor. Not one of them

reached out to slap away the fat flies. The only movement Olanna saw was that of a child sitting

by the door: he unfolded and refolded his arms. His bones were clearly outlined and the wrap of

his arm was flat, in a way that would be impossible if he had some flesh underneath the skin.

“(Adichie, p. 348)

“A mother was sitting on the floor with two children lying next to her. They were naked; the

taunt globes that were their bellies would not fit in a shirt anyway. Their buttocks and chests

were collapsed into folds of rumpled skin. On their head, spurts of reddish hair. Olanna slapped a

fly away from her face and thought how healthy all the flies looked, how alive, how vibrant.”

(Adichie, p.348) “Rotten smells hung heavy in the air. A group of children was roasting two

rats around a fire “(Adichie, p. 370)

Finally, the war divides the nation and produces cultural conflicts between the upper –class

Nigerians who are trying to imitate western culture because they think it is better and the several

ethnic groups that try to keep their traditions and roots strong.

Harrison, Richard´s houseboy is very proud to cook Western food, even though his British

master does not ask for it. “It is from an American recipe for potato stew that I am making this

one.” “But, sah, I am cooking the food of your country…” (Adichie, p.91)

“Of course, of course, but my point is that the only authentic identity for the African if the tribe

“, Master said to Ugwu. “I am Nigerian because a white man created Nigeria and gave me that

identity. I am black because the white man constructed black to be as different as possible from

his white. But I was Igbo before the white man came.” (Adichie, p.20)

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Odegnibo says: “The new Nigerian upper class is a collection of illiterates who read nothing and

eat food they dislike at overpriced Lebanese restaurants and have social conversations around

one subject: ‘How’s the new car behaving?’(Adichie, p.64)

In Half of a Yellow Sun the cruelty and horror of the war is presented through powerful

images and descriptions as real as life itself. The inequalities and injustice suffered by minority

ethnic groups from Africa fighting against their oppressor reflect a problem that has been present

since ancient times. The question is: Is it only a single story? Does inequality have to mean

indignity? Are the powerful always right? I hope the answer is not …

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References:

 Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi, 1977-. (2007). Half of a yellow sun. New York :Anchor

Books.

 McDougal Littell et al (2009) World History, Patterns of interaction. Boston: McDougal

Littell, A division of Houghton Mifflin Company.

 Nigerian Civil War. Retrieved from https://blackpast.org/gah/nigerian-civil-war-1967-

1970

 “The Danger of a Single Story | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | TED Talks.” Online video

clip. Youtube. Youtube: 7 Oct. 2009. Web. 28 May 2016.

 “The Story Behind the Book.” Chimamanda.com. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, n.d. Web.

27 May 2016.

 “Analysis of Half of a Yellow Sun and The Interrogation of The Postcolonial” (2017)

Retrieved from https://isleofsage.wordpress.com/2017/11/17/half-of-a-yellow-sun-and-

the-interrogation-of-the-postcolonial/