Half of a yellow sun as a post-colonial bildungsroman

Abstract EN

The current study aims at examining how the classical tradition of the bildungsroman is reconfigured by the postcolonial African novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in her novel Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) as an act of anti-colonial resistance on the one hand and to revive the memory of national struggle of her people on the other.

The study illuminates how the moral growth of the individual protagonist is parallel to the collective development of his nation to highlight a distinctive feature of the African postcolonial bildungsroman.

The development of Ugwu as a national icon is tied to the emergence and struggle of the Igbo community.

The study, also, investigates other characteristics of the postcolonial bildungsroman through showcasing how the severe and turbulent socio-economic and political conditions of post-independence Africa are detrimental to a perfect self-formation of the protagonist found in its western counterpart.

In Half of a Yellow Sun, Ugwu's coming of age from a marginalized naive village child to an ambitious but a disillusioned adult is largely affected by the traumatic consequences of the war.