Summary
As Chapter 19 opens, Ugwu and Harrison are talking about the fact that Richard wants to travel to Ugwu's village; the Englishman wants to witness an event known as the ori-opka festival. Ugwu is interested in obtaining tear gas in order to make Nnesinachi unconscious, perhaps to have sex with her. Harrison brushes off Ugwu's tear gas inquiries, and another local worker, Jomo, finds the request humorous when he is asked. Ugwu and Richard soon set off from Nsukka. For Ugwu, the festival is a disappointment since Nnesinachi is absent.
When Ugwu and Richard return, Ugwu discovers that Odenigbo's mother and an unassuming young woman named Amala have settled into Odenigbo's household. Olanna, for her part, is in London. Aware of the tensions between Olanna and Odenigbo's mother, Ugwu warns Odenigbo that there have been bad omens surrounding the older woman's presence. During the current visit, a swarm of flies appears in Odenigbo's kitchen. Odenigbo does not seem concerned. Later, at night, Ugwu discovers that Amala has been sleeping in Odenigbo's bedroom.
In Chapter 20, Olanna visits her mother, who is reeling from the infidelities of Olanna's father. He has bought a highly visible house for his current mistress, and Olanna goes to confront him; he indicates that he will set the situation right, but the visit itself is melancholy and alienating. Upon returning to her mother, Olanna finds that the older woman is arguing with a servant and threatening to fire the man for theft. Olanna succeeds in preventing this punishment. When she returns to Odenigbo, however, she sees Amala leaving with Odenigbo's mother and quickly intuits that Odenigbo had slept with Amala. Olanna moves out of the household. She relocates to her own Nsukka flat, visits Arize in Kano for consolation, and begins to bond with Edna Whaler, an African American music teacher who lives in a flat nearby. Odenigbo attempts to repair the relationship, but his efforts are complicated by the fact that Amala has become pregnant. Olanna, for her part, runs into Richard during a shopping trip, takes him back to her flat, and has sex with him.
Chapter 21 begins by tracing Richard's reactions to his brief affair with Olanna. Hoping to keep his passionate meeting a secret, he is uncomfortable about seeing Kainene again and attends a memorial service for Winston Churchill. Susan accompanies him; afterwards, they head over to the Polo Club to relax. Susan asks about Kainene and herself seems convinced that Richard will return to her eventually.
The chapter concludes with Excerpt 5 of The World Was Silent When We Died. This passage calls attention to the problem of starvation, which afflicted Biafra and brought considerable global attention to the country's plight. African and American onlookers alike took notice, and the Red Cross highlighted Biafra's situation as comparable to the suffering created in World War II.
Early in Chapter 22, Ugwu is suffering from diarrhea. His ailment has been brought on by the anxieties that he shares with Odenigbo. Amala and Odenigbo's mother have now moved into Odenigbo's household, but Odenigbo wants them to leave and anticipates that Olanna will return. Ugwu discovers that Amala has begun eating hot peppers, which she believes will terminate her pregnancy. After Odenigbo's mother and Amala leave, Olanna returns and confronts Odenigbo, blaming him for the affair with Amala. Although Olanna and Odenigbo have sex, Olanna leaves soon after, to Ugwu's disappointment.
Olanna goes to visit Richard early in Chapter 23; she does not wish to continue their affair and wants to resume a cordial social relationship instead. Distressed, Edna also visits, explaining that a Baptist church in her American hometown was recently bombed. Olanna goes to confront Odenigbo about Amala once again, and this time she begins to settle back in at Odenigbo's house. Amala soon gives birth to a baby girl. Though Amala does not show any affection for the child, Olanna resolves to adopt the girl and to call her Baby until she and Odenigbo settle on a proper name. Olanna also calls Kainene to explain this plan; Kainene approves. Later, Olanna receives another call from Kainene, who has discovered the affair with Richard and is likely to hold a grudge.
As Chapter 24 begins, Richard feels anger towards Harrison, who has told Kainene that Odenigbo had a loud, angry confrontation with Richard. Kainene does not throw Richard out of her house in Port Harcourt. She does, however, burn Richard's manuscript, "The Basket of Hands," a gesture that prompts Richard to reflect on whether there is still hope for their relationship and on whether he is truly committed to writing.
The chapter ends with Excerpt 6 of The World Was Silent When We Died. Here, the narrator argues that British support for the North during the Civil War shaped the responses of other countries, including the United States, Canada, and the Soviet Union. While China and France offered some support for Biafra, African countries feared that support for Biafra might inspire secession movements. Thus, these nations supported Nigeria in the North instead.
Analysis
While working through Part 2, a careful reader will notice allusions to a difficult pre-war time in the lives of the central characters. Ugwu contemplates this difficult stretch of time just before Olanna and Odenigbo's wedding; the young man doesn't "want to think too much about blame [...] because it would remind him of Master and Olanna during those weeks before Baby's birth, weeks he preferred to forget" (250). It is natural that references of this sort - even this one, which dramatically closes off a series of reflections before a section break - would stand out much less than the accounts of bloodshed and trauma in Adichie's narrative of Biafran independence. To fully explain the "blame" that lingers in Ugwu's mind, the author may need to shift entirely away from the horrors of war and into material that, though loaded with psychological and romantic conflict, does not overwhelm the reader with gruesome imagery or nationwide implications.
The events of Part 3 are dominated by two fleeting affairs - Odenigbo and Amala, then Richard and Olanna - and by the birth of Baby. Some of the central contrasts and motives from the peacetime chapters of Part 1 persist: Richard is still grappling with his status as a postcolonial white man with good intentions, and Ugwu is still trying to navigate both modern ideals and village superstitions. After all, it is Ugwu who notices the flies that are a troubling omen of Odenigbo's affair: "Ugwu did not understand how Master could be so unperturbed, how he could not see that the flies were not normal at all" (269). Ugwu's belief that the flies are part of the "bad medicine" of Odenigbo's mother is a reminder that Ugwu holds onto village ways that Odenigbo himself has discarded. Of course, in real life the appearance of the flies and the onset of romantic troubles could simply be a coincidence - but in a work of literature, those foreshadowing flies have symbolic power.
In other ways, Adichie signals that infidelity will be a central theme even before Odenigbo's household is thrown into turmoil. The incident with the flies is followed, within a page or two, by a conversation between Olanna and her mother, who is "telling Olanna about her father's mistress" (271). While these episodes set the tone for the conflicts that follow, there is curiously little about them that would start to set up a valid explanation of why the affairs take place in the first place. Ugwu - the same young man who wanted to drug his sweetheart with tear gas - combines real loyalty to Odenigbo with bizarre notions about adult relationships. Nor are there many especially helpful parallels between Olanna's philandering father and Odenigbo, an intellectual whose relationship with Olanna - like Richard's with Kainene - has been depicted as largely fulfilling.
Tracing the motives of the characters in cheating on their partners can guide the reader to a few factors that emerged earlier in the novel, in domestic sections of Part 1 that have perhaps been disregarded after the carnage of Part 2. Richard, though not hateful towards Kainene, is unsettled by her connection to Madu and by his own impotence during lovemaking; his sexual encounter with Olanna is immediately overpowering. If Richard's affair is motivated by insecurities, Olanna's has an element of revenge. She has endured aggression from Odenigbo's mother and, from Odenigbo, "the flagrant way he continued to sidestep responsibility and blame his mother" (305). The last of these annoyances leads her to declare that she had an affair with Richard. Because he is not directly used as one of the novel's points of view, Odenigbo is somewhat harder to read in terms of reasoning - though possible explanations for his infidelity abound. His mother's disapproval of Olanna, Olanna's perceived trouble getting pregnant, her hesitance towards marriage, and her higher family status could all be causes of lingering resentment.
Contrary to Ugwu's fears, none of the households are permanently disrupted by the infidelities that roil Part 3. Richard is barred from Odenigbo's gatherings, but Part 2 indicates that this rejection has not undermined Richard's sense of belonging in Nsukka or loyalty to Nigerian life. Even the falling-out between Kainene and Olanna suggests that the sisters share powerful connections, despite the novel's references to how different the two women are in looks and personality. Their similarly optimistic reactions to the birth of Baby unite them just as much as their similarly understated and vengeful reactions to their cheating partners. Though hurt, they are willing to rebuild their relationships - unaware at this point that some of these vexed relationships might sustain them through the trials of the Civil War.
