Disintegration and Historical Imperatives: A Postcolonial Criticism of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half Of A Yellow Sun

Abstract

The trajectory of Nigeria cannot be fully appreciated without referring to the Nigerian Civil War of 1967-1970. There have been different accounts of the war regarding the causes and consequences on the people and the nation. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s account of the Nigerian Civil War, as crafted in her second novel titled Half of a Yellow Sun, reconstructed the war in a way that brought life to it in a rather imaginative way. This paper aims to harvest the major highlights regarding the cause and consequence of the Biafran war in a way that will make the Nigerian people see the need to deviate from what led to the conflict at that time as currently being fueled through incidences of ethnic rivalry, religious intolerance, corruption, oppression, foreign influences among others. This is done through the lens of Postcolonial Theory as a theoretical framework. The study reveals that the scourge of disintegration that led to the war has colonial colouration. Adichie represents disintegration with symbolism and metaphor and deploys literature as a panacea to social disintegration. This paper recommends pursuing peaceful dialogue as a better alternative to conflict resolution rather than violence and bloodshed.