Introduction “I wrote this novel because I wanted to write about love and war, because I grew up in the shadow of Biafra, because I wanted to engage with my history in order to make sense of my present, because many of the issues that led to the war remain unsolved in Nigeria today.” When asked about the initiation of writing Half of a yellow sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie said like that. Set in Nigeria during the 1960s, the narrative alternates between the optimistic early years of the decade and the brutal civil war period at the end of it, which shows the significant changes witnessed in the decade. With her extraordinary narration skill, Adichie succeeded in bringing her people's world to us and presenting multi-issues in cultural, …show more content…
Different from the precolonial period when Nigerian women played a major role in social and economic activities, gender roles in the postcolonial period had a patriarchal view, a belief that man should be in the dominant position while woman were supposed to be subordinated to man. 1) Traditional attitudes preserved in the Nigerian society Man's dominance over woman in both family and society It's not difficult for us to notice that most of the politicians and successful businessmen in Half Of A Yellow Sun are male: Olanna’s father, a rich businessman; Chief Okonji, the finance minister, and other high-level dignitaries hosted by Olanna's father are male. These characters reflect the unequal social structure where man occupied most important position in politics and held most wealth of the society. Also education was considered as a male’s dominion, a woman in postcolonial Nigeria was not supposed to go to the University. Odenigbo's mother Mama, a village woman whose “entire life is in Abba” (Part one, chapter 5) represented the old generation at the time, when talked about Olanna, the beautiful, well educated young woman, she …show more content…
By depicting these women's experience Achidie tried to show us the vulnerability of women at the time when they were regarded as “sexual object”. Ugwu's lover in Umuahia, Eberechi, was pushed by her parents into the army officer's room in exchange of her brother’s posting. She narrates her unpleasant sexual encounter with the Colonel who treated her in a rude and no respect way, and there was a monologue of Ugwu: “He thought, in the following days, about him and Eberechi in bed, how different it would be from her experience with the colonel. He would treat her with the respect she deserved and do only what she liked, only what she wanted him to do.”(part four