Half of a Yellow Sun

Once the Nigerian Civil War begins, the narrative is strewn with descriptions of the tragic consequences of war. Nigerian air raids attack wedding parties, whole villages are slaughtered en masse, and children’s bellies swell from starvation. Such events serve to remind us that war is hell for all who are involved, and that often innocent civilians suffer just as much, if not more, in war than the armies who are battling do. All the characters of the novel are touched by the horrors of war in some way or another. Richard vomits when he witnesses an entire room of Igbos gunned down in an airport. Ugwu is forced into the Biafran military and is traumatized by his combat experiences and traumatizes others, as he participates in the rape of a bar girl. Odenigbo and Olanna witness their houseboy’s beheading by a whizzing piece of shrapnel. Kainene travels to Nigeria and presumably dies there, as she never returns. Such awful incidents illustrate the terrible humanitarian crises that war produces, and they also serve to convey that some humans have a tendency to sink to deplorable depths during wartime.