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OPEN WOUND AND THE NIGERIAN CIVIL WAR: A METAPHORICAL 

READING OF KAINENE’S LOSS IN CHIMAMANDA ADICHIE’S HALF OF A 

YELLOW SUN. 

 

Iwunze Davidson Chimezie (Ph.D) 

English Language and Literature Department 

Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria 

 

ABSTRACT  

Notwithstanding the diverse motivations behind wars and the justifications given by their 

perpetrators, the magnitude of agony, suffering and trauma which culminate into loss as 

experienced by war victims are quite monumental. Hence, after wars, efforts are made towards 

reconciliation through which healing is predicted. In Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), therefore, 

Chimamanda Adichie through the character of Kainene metaphorically demonstrates the socio-

political, cultural, economic and psychological loss the Igbos experienced collectively during 

and after the Biafran /Nigerian war. The notion of traumatized individuals has dominated the 

criticisms of the novel so far. However, in seeking to advance this opinion, this paper 

interrogates the collective wound/loss the Igbos experienced during the war and how this 

wound is still ongoing as an open wound that refuses to be healed, which the critics of the novel 

have paid little attention to. Therefore, focusing on Cathy Caruth’s trauma theory, which 

depicts trauma as an open wound, and through which this paper is analyzed, this article 

concludes that the disappearance of Kainene after the war symbolically embodies an open 

wound in the lives of the Igbos as a group that is yet to be healed indicating a denial of closure.  

Keywords: Trauma, Open wound, Nigerian/Biafran war, Chimamanda Adichie 

 

INTRODUCTION  

Chimamanda Adichie’s literary incursion into global limelight, partly, hinges on her deep 

commitment to the projection of socio-political, economic and cultural obstructions the Igbos 

endured particularly during the Biafran/Nigerian war (1967-1970). These obstructions, 

however, culminated into a recurrent loss that has dominated the post war ambiance of the Igbo 

ethnic group. Narrating the historical account of any war has been the major preoccupation of 

many writers. Both the historians and fiction writers have, over the centuries, demonstrated 

profound fidelity in chronicling violent events that had changed the diverse course of human 

history.  Therefore, when Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) was published the ovation that 

overwhelmed its reception, simply revolves around the dexterity of its historical accuracy. 

Coupled also, with the fact that the author is not among the “eye witness” generation rather she 

was born seven years after the war! Adichie’s imaginative prowess came to bear as she adeptly 

navigates the traumatic paradigm of the Nigerian civil war in Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) 

revealing the psychological and physical disproportions that epitomized the survival of the Igbo 

people caught up in the Nigerian civil war conflict. This coincides with Spleth’s (2017: 137) 

affirmation that “Adichie’s narrative dramatizes the real human dimension of the… struggle, 

finding the courage to survive in the face of constant ‘displacement, insecurity, and deprivation, 

and learning to depend on each other in solidarity, born out of experience rather than ideology”. 



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The novel conscientiouslytraces the tragedies that define the socio-political structure of the 

Nigerian state between 1967 and1970.  

Employing various voices of account typical of trauma narrative, Adichie captures the Nigerian 

civil war in its most horrendous dimension as well as the underlying consequences both have 

on the geographical and human spheres. Functioning as an intellectual power arena, 

Odenigbo’s house, provides not only a favorable environment for socio-political engagements 

but also a rallying point for academic interactions of some university lecturers, which gradually 

disintegrates into chaos as the university town fell to the federal troop. From this house, all the 

characters involved in the interactions except Miss Adebayo, is taken into the ordeals of the 

civil war including Ugwu, the houseboy. The characters’ encounters before and during the war 

reveal that the human tragedy of the war was not only a colossal loss but also that the 

individuals witnessed a gradual psychological disenchantment that ravaged their lives.  

Given the fact that the Igbos lost the war, it is not far-fetched that they seemed to have remained 

marginalized in almost every facet of Nigerian polity. In relation to the thematic preoccupation 

of this article, Mabura (2008:206) reveals that “Kainene serves to foreground her disappearance 

and its wider ‘implications of Igbo loss of political, judicial, and sovereign powers under, first, 

the colonial government and, second, the Nigerian federal state”. By implication, this loss in 

its entirety symbolically represents an open wound that defies healing in the psyche of the Igbos 

long after the war has ended. To Nwankwo (2008, p.6), “The Nigeria civil war, tells its own 

story, too … probably of a tragedy that is still unfolding. In other words, the tragedy of the civil 

war still festers in the present-day polity of the Nigerian nation. Abayomi (2017:5), while 

describing the character of Kainene emphasizes that “this ‘amphibian’ character carries with 

her extra baggage, which are the burden of history and the collective angst of a ‘defeated’ 

people who have had to wait for over forty years to be reabsorbed and reintegrated into the 

country Nigeria.”  

Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), therefore, establishes a connection between the revived Biafran 

agitation and the author’s conceptions of the war experience through the employment of trauma 

as an open wound. A wound that is synonymous with the historical violence against the Igbos, 

partly under the colonial government and post-colonial Nigeria especially during and after the 

war; and its apparent manifestation of their socio-political, economic and cultural 

marginalization. Lending credence to Nnolim’s (2010:145) assertion that “The world created 

by Adichie is one of betrayal, death, conflict and loss. The Igbo were victims, also, of the 

residual shenanigans and schemings of British imperial policy in Nigeria”.  

Trauma, as a subject, has been employed immensely in the analyses of Nigerian civil war 

literature. This is so because it captures not only the magnitude of loss but also the severity of 

such loss. Also, it helps to access the level of healing from such loss whether there is progress 

or not. The echoes of this loss, however, has continued to resonate eloquently in the form of 

resurgence of Biafra nation in varying degrees of agitations from the separatist groups of Ralph 

Uwazurike’s Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) 

through Nnamdi Kanu’s Indigenous People of Biafara (IPOB)  to Simon Ekpa’s Eastern 

Security Network (ESN). 

Undoubtedly,the aspect of subjecting Half of a Yellow Sun(2006) tothe socio-political, 

economic and cultural experiences of the Igbo’s after war as an open wound that refuses to be 

healed has not received much critical attention. Although Novak (2008:34) appraises the novel 

from the traumatic viewpoint; she merely contends that the work is a “site of trauma: the 

lingering effects of colonialism”. Her concern focuses on the effects of colonialism that 



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eventually metamorphosed into civil war with its attendant trauma. Her analysis, however, 

addresses the trauma of the past experiences and does not point to the ongoing trauma that is 

obtainable in the lives of the Igbos in contemporary Nigeria. Again, Abayomi (2017:6) posits 

that the novel uses Kainene as anarchetype for the Igbo’s quest for integration within the social 

framework of the Nigerian state. He interrogates that “If Kainene and Olanna are one, and 

Olanna is in retrospect Adaobi, then it behoovesAdichie as the creator of this reconstruct to 

remind her people of the Biafran archetype in their search for acceptance within the Nigerian 

state.”  Abayomicompares the character of Kainene as an archetypal loss of the Igbos to the 

loss of the warbut did not expose the various manifestationsof the loss. Moreover, he did not 

subject the article to any theoretical framework to substantiate his narrative. However, not only 

employing Kainene’s loss symbolically as a wound that is still ongoing in the collective vibes 

of the Igbos, this article relies on the trauma theory of Cathy Caruth to demonstrate that 

Kainene’s loss is a metaphor of an open wound in the psyche of the Igbos within the 

contemporary Nigerian state. 

OPEN WOUND AND TRAUMA THEORY  

Trauma study seems a well suited theory for war novels. This is because as a theory, trauma 

relives the story of wounds that are induced during and after conflict or violent situation. De 

Mey explains that “Trauma as field of study goes back to the early twentieth century which is 

the time when Sigmund Freud developed his theory of psychoanalysis. He was the one who 

changed the meaning of the term “trauma” from indicating “physical injury” to psychological 

injury” (34). This theory started with his study of the cause of psychosis in hysterical women 

whose investigation is similar to that of the French neurologist Jean Martin Charcot (qtd, in 

Bessel Van Der Kolk and Onno Van Der Hart (158). Charcot’s examination of hysterical 

women led to the comparison between mental illness and trauma paying particular interest to 

the uniqueness of traumatic symptoms like sudden paralysis, amnesia, sensory loss and 

convulsions.  

Trauma is considered as a devastating situation that affects the psychology of people who were 

confronted with an injury. Etymologically, trauma originates from the Greek word “wound” 

which originally means an injury to the body. As time progresses, there is a shift which 

redefined the wound from a bodily infliction to that of the mind. Studies show that trauma is a 

medical term used to refer to a wound or external bodily injury, or a mental injury, triggered 

by emotional distress. Cloete and Mlambo citing Rodi-Risberg considers trauma as a 

phenomenon that is too shocking to be fully registered upon occurrence. It is only experienced 

belatedly. It offers specific challenges to traditional notions of referentiality (14). However, in 

the words of Caruth the “wound of the mind is not like the wound of the body, a simple and 

healable event, but rather an event that is experienced too soon, too unexpectedly, to be fully 

known and is therefore not available to consciousness until it imposes itself again repeatedly, 

in the nightmares and repetitive actions of the survivor” (4). Thus, trauma is both an immediate 

experience of the wounding, and the belated effects of that wound in form of dreams, 

hallucinations, flashbacks, repeated actions which are the hallmark of trauma theory.  

From the definitions so far, trauma manifests not only in the physical body and the psychic 

realm but also in the emotional makeup of a person. In other words, the continuation of violence 

in man’s immediate surroundings had a bearing on their psychological formation. Fanon argues 

that “man’s chronically neurotic state of mind cannot be alienated as long as the social 

economic structure that brought it on him remained unchanged” (120). Marder’s assertion 

becomes a confirmation that because traumatic events often happen due to social forces as well 



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as in the social world, trauma has an inherently political, historical, and ethical dimension (1). 

Stevens concurs that trauma is figured as a cultural category which circulates among various 

social contexts that give it differing meanings and co-produce its multiple social effects (1).  

It is instructive to note however, that the incidence of wound primarily does not elicit a lasting 

impression initially on the individual but a subsequent wounding that informs an undying pain 

which usually manifest through a voice – a voice that is out to tell the truth. (Freud, 31-32). 

Narrating traumatic incidents through a voice depicts the fact that a storyline is inextricably 

bound with trauma. Therefore, according to many researches on the application of trauma to 

literature, it becomes conspicuous that literature serves as the best intermediary of trauma 

representation than history or any other discipline that relates factual happenings only. Literary 

texts go beyond facts presentation like History, to recreate artistically experiences of trauma. 

These texts reveal the entire scenario of making the unknown known, which is exposing the 

hidden fragments, capturing the belatedness that characterizes a wound as well as the 

incomprehensibility that figures trauma.  

Therefore, for the purpose of this study, the string of trauma theory employed is the one 

advanced by Cathy Caruth. This is because not just that Caruth’s conception of trauma had 

basis on the works of Sigmund Freud which considered hysterical women and the Second 

World War neurosis victims but her theory also employs the survivors of wars as case studies. 

Moreover, Caruth describes trauma as the response to an unexpected or overwhelming violent 

event that are not fully grasped as they occur, but return later in repeated flashbacks, 

nightmares, and other repetitive phenomenon (91). This explanation encapsulates the 

experiences of the battlefield survivors whose cases Caruth studied. This also captures the 

experiences of the characters in the novel understudy. Apparently, it logically follows that this 

work which explores the implication of trauma in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a 

Yellow Sun (2006) should adopt the theoretical framework advanced by Caruth since both have 

war victims as their common case studies.    

A METAPHORICAL READING OF KAINENE’S LOSS IN THE NIGERIAN CIVIL 

WAR 

Kainene’s disappearance in Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) demonstrates the compelling 

exemplification of the wound inflicted on the Igbos by the Biafran/Nigerian war. It conveys 

the unsettled trauma, identity fragmentation and the botched promise of unity and nationhood, 

underlining the apprehensions between Igbo identity and Nigerian citizenship even in 

contemporary times. The novel also symbolizes Kainene’s disappearance not only as a 

replication of the disintegration of Igbo identity, which has been enmeshed in the struggle to 

maintain their cultural heritage, but also the systemic marginalization and violence. For Uko 

(2008, p.54): 

In symbolic terms, prior to the Nigerian civil war, the people of the Eastern 

region, in particular the Igbo, felt marginalized and relegated in the national 

polity. That the state of Biafran was declared was a manifestation of their lack 

of a sense of belonging on the one hand, and a climax of their feeling of 

dissatisfaction, on the other.   

Before delving into the traumatic proportions and their effects in the novel, it is significant to 

establish Kainene’s disappearance not only as an individual catastrophe but also as a national 

tragedy. Adichie’s portrayal of Kainene’s personal traits such as innovation, resilience, 

doggedness, hard work, risk taking, entrepreneurial spirit etc., underscores the micro reflection 



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of the socio-cultural and economic identities through which the Igbos are known for. 

Interestingly, this could have informed Abayomi’s (2017:6) representation of Kainene as “the 

epitome of a Biafran undying spirit. Though vanished, she remains ever present in the minds 

of her people and admirers.” Kainene’s characterization in the novel delineates her as a 

creative, resourceful and strong willed person. Instances abound in the novel how she 

ingeniously unveils such traits in challenging moments of trauma, pain, sorrow and 

uncertainties. However, her responses to traumatic occurrences in the narrative will be 

examined first, before verifying how her personal traits foregrounded her character as an 

emblematic open wound of the Igbos.  

Kainene’s traumatic itinerary begins after the gruesome murder of her uncle and the members 

of his household. Through Kainene’s traumatic memory, one is able to see the after effects 

through the description given by Richard. Having wept before Olanna and her parents when 

she learnt of the death of uncle Mbazei, Aunty Ifeka and Arize, she goes home only to be 

affected by the continued remembrance of that brutal news. According to Richard, Kainene 

shows signs of withdrawal typical of traumatized patients: 

Her aura of distance had returned since she came back from visiting Olanna in 

Nsukka. She had put up a photograph of her murdered relatives- Arize laughing 

in her wedding dress, Uncle Mbazei ebullient in a tight suit next to a solemn 

Aunty Ifeka in a print wrapper- but she said little about them… she often 

withdrew into silence in the middle of a conversation. (Emphasis mine, p.167) 

Kainene’s trauma at this point is double faced. Earlier on her twin sister, Olanna had terribly 

wounded her psychologically by having sex with her boyfriend, Richard. She is still keeping a 

distance at Richard when the horrible death of her relatives happened. So, with these incidences 

her behaviour changes“she resumes her distance and often withdraws into silence in a middle 

of a conversation”. These are features of a traumatized mind. Krystal describes this as 

“survivors living in withdrawn depression” (77). In a similar occurrence during the fall of Port 

Harcourt, Ikejide one of Kainene’s servants is hit by shrapnel and dies horribly: 

A piece of shrapnel, the size of a fist, wheezed past. Ikejide was still running 

and, in the moment that Richard glanced away and back, Ikejide’s head was 

gone. The body was running, arched slightly forwards, arms flying around, but 

there was no head. There was a bloodied neck. Kainene screamed. (317) 

Kainene becomes shocked and momentarily dazed. Richard refuses to look at the headless body 

as Harrison buries the body and the separated head. Kainene watches forlornly sitting on the 

bare ground: 

Are you all right? Richard asked her. She did not respond. There was an eerie 

blankness in her eyes. Richard was not sure of what to do. He shook her gently 

but the blank look remained, so he went to the tap and splashed a bucket of cold 

water on her. (317) 

It is only a traumatized psyche that could react the way Kainene did during the gruesome but 

sudden death of Ikejide, who a moment ago was bustling with energy and life. It is surprising 

that that Kainene admitted that she “never really noticed” Ikejide. But, his death really 

devastates her terribly. Later after they have reached Orlu, Kainene reminds Richard about 

Olanna seeing a mother carrying her child’s head. Her memory has started haunting her by 



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reenacting a similar incidence. She has really come to identify with mourning and trauma like 

Olanna. Her memory continues to haunt her: 

How could shrapnel cut off Ikejide’s head so completely? Kainene asked, as if 

she wanted him to tell her that she was mistaken about the whole thing. He 

wished he could. At nights, she cried. She told him she wanted to dream of 

Ikejide but she woke up every morning and remembered his running headless 

body clearly while, in the safer blurred territory of her dreams, she saw herself 

smoking a cigarette in an elegant gold holder. (318) 

Richard’s observation about Kainene’s trauma is quite revealing “she often withdrew into 

silence in the middle of a conversation, and when she did he let her be; sometimes he envied 

her for her ability to be changed by what had happened. (Emphasis mine, 167). The italicized 

statement suggests the ability of trauma to change ones disposition. Moreover, these traumatic 

confrontations seemed to have reinforced Kainene’s resilience as she wades through the 

grueling times of the war making her personal traits becoming expressively identifiable. Earlier 

in the novel, Kainene’s entrepreneurial demeanor is clearly established as she handled some of 

her father’s businesses: 

So Kainene will manage the cement factory?’ Chief Okonji asked, turning to 

her father. She’ll oversee everything in the east, the factories and our new oil 

interests. She has always had an excellent eye for business. (31) 

Having recognized her managerial competence in business, Kainene consistently carried out 

these tasks effectively within her capacity even in war times. In fact, it was during the war that 

her ability for innovation, risk taking and resourcefulness were made manifest. What she learnt 

from her father’s diverse businesses helped her to stand out during the war. Her innovative 

approach to problem-solving clearly shows as she birthed the idea of opening and running a 

relief organization. “Things were normal until Port Harcourt fell. I was an army contractor, and 

I had a license to import stockfish. I’m in Orlu now. I’m in charge of refugee camp there” 

(343). Additionally, she combines the management of the refugee camp with other activities 

that complement her efforts in ameliorating the sufferings of people during the war. 

“Kainene launched a Plant Our Own Food movement, and when she joined the 

men and women and children in making ridges, Olanna wondered where she 

had learned to hold a hoe.” (389) 

Olanna’s skepticism about her twin’s farming abilities accentuates Kainene’s skill of 

improvising and adapting quickly to challenges especially as the war progressed. In fact, 

Olanna keeps wondering at Kainene’s entrepreneurial spirit fuelled by her confidence. “Olanna 

watched Kainene speak. She did not hear much of what she said, because she was thinking of 

how unrelenting Kainene’s confidence was” (347). Kainene’s ability to navigate her diverse 

visions during the war with equanimity not only reveals her courage but also her commitment 

to the cause of Biafra. As the war degenerates with its attendant implications of hunger, disease 

and death, Kainene, in alignment with her entrepreneurial spirit, delves into the risk-taking 

venture of “Afia attack” where individuals cross to the enemies’ border to buy and sell. People 

detest this kind of business because of the inherent risks. Unfortunately, in one of her numerous 

engagements, Kainene embarks on the journey of “Afia attack” and never returns. 

Therefore, reading Kainene’s disappearance as a metaphor of open wound to the psyche of the 

Igbos in contemporary Nigeria simply compares Kainene’s personal qualities to that of the 



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Igbos in general. This recalls Abayomi’s (2017:8) argument, “that she (Kainene) is 

archetypally projected through what Carl Jung regards as the collective unconscious to 

symbolize the general loss of the Biafran people in the novel.” Her innovation, resilience, 

doggedness, hard work, risk taking, entrepreneurial spirit in moments of emergency, 

challenges, and trauma reveal the natural abilities the Igbos are known for. And when Kainene 

disappears in the traumatic narrative during the war and never returns, metaphorically the Igbos 

seemed to have lost their socio-political and cultural identity in the post Biafran/Nigeria civil 

war. During the war, like Kainene, the Igbos entrepreneurial acumen came to limelight. 

Throughout the three years’ war, the Igbos improvised greatly in almost every sphere of life in 

order to sustain themselves. They were able to refine petrol without refineries, produce 

Ogbunigwe – a weapon of mass destruction, and build an airport among others. Describing the 

manufacturing of Ogbunigwe in the novel, Ekwenugo narrates: “about what he and his 

colleagues were making: high-impact landmines called Ogbunigwe, brake fluid from coco-nut 

oil, car engines from scrap metal, armored cars, grenades” (198). 

From the above narrative, it is clearly shown how the Igbos during the war were able to 

improvise technological necessities by making “brake fluid from coconut oil” “car engines 

from scrap metal” and “armored cars and grenades”. Such ingenuity of a people becomes so 

conspicuous in a war riddled situation, reflecting the old adage that “necessity is the mother of 

invention”. Years later, contemplating on the aftermath of the war, Malife (2009) boldly reveals 

that: 

Today, Nnewi, for instance, is referred to as the Japan of Africa because of the 

people’s genius in technology. This could have been part of the knowledge 

gained and utilized in the manufacture of Ogbunigwe. (106) 

If Freud’s (31-32) submission that the occurrence of wound largely does not stimulate a lasting 

imprint on the individual but a consequent wounding that establishes an endless agony which 

usually reveal through a voice – a voice that is out to tell the truth. Then, the invasion of war 

against the Igbos does not provoke a wound per se but the subsequent wounding in the 

demonstration of marginalization after the war has become an endless pain that has refused to 

be healed. The wound, however, has become a recurring decimal that queries the belongingness 

of the Igbos in Nigeria. In Uko’s estimation (2008, 54): 

It signifies the fact that even though the war in Nigeria has been over since 1970, 

and a ‘no-victor-no vanquished’ declaration was made to douse all nerves and 

tempers, Biafrans, the people from Eastern Nigeria, though still in Nigeria, 

neither fully belong nor are they independent and free to harness their resources 

for their own welfare. 

Adopting a multifaceted nature, the diverse voices of agitation like the separatist groups of 

Ralph Uwazurike’s Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra 

(MASSOB), Nnamdi Kanu’s Indigenous People of Biafara (IPOB) and Simon Ekpa’s Eastern 

Security Network (ESN), are only an expression of a wound whose cries reflect the truth that 

is yet to be confronted. Considering the avalanche agitations from former Biafran enclave, and 

the seemingly disinterestedness of the Nigerian government to theses cries, the solution seems 

unattainable. The indifference of the federal government towards theses agitations seems quite 

ambivalent. Citing Chinua Achebe, Okafor (2008, p.34) contemplates “the portrait of 

Nigeria/Biafra conflict as the ambivalent gaze of a mother on her unwanted child”. 

Substantiating this claim further, he noted that: 



        Iwunze Davidson                                Open Wound And The Nigerian Civil War: A Metaphorical… 

98 
 

Chinua Achebe has argued quite convincingly, one of the major issues that 

confront the real Nigeria is its ambivalent attitude towards the Igbo people. On 

the one hand , most of  the other ethnic nationalities in Nigeria are envious of 

the spectacular advances made by the Igbo people in all fields of human 

endeavor and consequently, would love to get rid of them. On the other hand, 

the same ethnic groups want to preserve the territorial integrity of Nigeria; 

hence, they do not want the Igbo people to secede from Nigeria and become an 

independent state. 

This “ambivalent gaze” has generated violent squabbles between the Nigerian government and 

the separatist groups especially in the south east states of Nigeria where many lives and 

properties have been lost. Proffering solutions to this continued imbroglio, Nwachukwu (2022) 

identifies the effectiveness of social justice in the peace building that will restore healing 

which: 

Involves acts such as reparation or compensation for damage inflicted, 

restoration for past losses, moral and political restitution, social, economic and 

cultural restructuring, as well as sharing of power, responsibility and resources. 

Considering the nature of the grievances underlying the Biafran separatist 

struggle, the social-justice approach to peace building appears to be the most 

plausible way of addressing the problem. 

 

CONCLUSION  

Kainene’s disappearance in Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) endures as a lingering exemplification 

for the unsettled ordeal of the Nigerian civil war; an ordeal that has continued even to the 

present day Nigeria navigating through the socio-cultural, economic and political realities of 

the Igbo ethnic group. Through her loss, Adichie depicts the silences, obliterations, 

ambivalences and paradoxes that distinguish the nation’s fight with its vicious past; a past 

which Udezo and Ajakor (2009: 230) succinctly recalled: 

After the war the Gowon administration declared ‘No Victor’ No Vanquished’ 

concerning the war which was merely in principle not in practice. The aftermath 

of the war continues to be seen in the running of the nation. For instance, in the 

south east zone of the country which consists of five states where as other zones 

are made up of six states despite agitations from the zone something reasonable 

is yet to be done.  There is a notion that some parts of the nation are marginalized 

which is attributed to the effects of Nigerian civil war.   

The above reference to marginalization parallels Kainene’s unaccounted fate which confronts 

the narrative thrust toward closure, indicating the larger cultural and political denial that 

inhibits national healing. By leaving her fortune uncertain, Adichie constrains her audience to 

challenge the emotional and historical vacuums that endure long after the war ends. In doing 

so, the narrative transfigures individual loss into a compelling emblem of communal mourning, 

making Kainene a persistent “open wound” in the Igbo’s memory ambience.  



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