Themes and Techniques in African Novel: A Review of Ngozi Chimamanda Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun

Abstract

Theme is the subset of a talk, piece of writing or a person’s thought, a topic. It is he author’s major idea in the story. Usually, it is not presented directly but understood from its association with the components of the techniques employed, that is, with plot, characters, setting and style. The peculiarity in terms of relating the story in a work of literature is what is usually regarded as narrative technique. According to Wikipedia, narrative technique is the style of telling the story. It means the technical or mechanical skills employed in telling the story (1230). M.H. Abrams in A Glossary of Literary Terms refers to it as the author’s method of writing a novel including the sentence patterns, dialogue or monologue, symbols, imagery, the stream of consciousness or flashback technique and figurative expressions like simile, irony, etc. (103). Based on this point, this third person point of view, which is also known as the “eye of God point of view,” can be seen in Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun, whereby the author tells the story from the beginning to the end. He knows what characters can do, what they cannot do, or what they fail to do. We, therefore, see Chimamanda Adichie in Half of a Yellow Sun portraying the images or symbols of dismal situations and pains which recur very often in the society, appropriately depicting the conditions prevalent in the era of Nigeria-Biafra war. She advocates the themes of discipline, peace, love, honesty among the people in the society and elimination of intimidation, man’s inhumanity to his fellow man, and social misdeed in our society as she discusses events and experiences of the Nigeria-Biafra war.