My Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half Of The Yellow Sun

“Language, the most powerful communication tool, cannot always convey the right meaning. It has been claimed also that often the problem is not of the colonial Other who cannot speak, but of the Western interlocutor who cannot listen, who comes always with a cultural and often stereotyped baggage” (Plaias, 2013)

Introduction

Half of the yellow sun (2006) is a novel written my Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, whereby the predominant focus lays upon the Nigerian civil war. In a brief synopsis, the title of the novel is representative of the emblem that appears on the Biafran flag, this half sun symbolizes hope. Half of the yellow sun takes place in Nigeria and the setting is the Nigerian civil war whereby the people of Igbo or Igbo people withdrew from Nigeria in order to make their own independent state known as Biafra. In half of the Yellow Sun, the time frame fluctuates between the early and late 1960’s. Instead of having one narrator, the novel switches between three main characters: Ugwu, a village boy, Olanna, a middle class woman and Richard, an Englishman; all of whom have their own ‘voice’ and thus provides the reader with three very different perspectives – this wide spectrum of viewpoints provide the reader with insight into the varying racial and class divisions that Nigeria

In the novel, language acts as an ethnic marker in Nigeria; the language you spoke defined you and where you lived. The characters also become involved in or navigate through the use of other languages. For instance, Richard whose language is English learnt to speak Igbo and gains an understanding of this Nigerian language. One of the characters in the novel called Odenigbo, despite his Anti-western ideology, speaks in English when he has to speak about Olanna’s trauma and what she went