Summary
As Chapter 25 begins, Olanna is trying to cope with the hardships caused by war. She is unsettled by fears of another air raid, is aware that she and Odenigbo are pressed for money, and is worried because Baby has become ill. In her own contribution to Biafran society, Olanna now teaches in a nearby school; one of her colleagues is Mrs. Muokelu. Masculine and hairy in terms of appearance, Mrs. Muokelu is also patriotic and eager to help. While the antibiotics that Baby is given do not appear to take effect, the egg yolk that Mrs. Muokelu finds for the young girl to eat helps Baby to recover.
Olanna must herself start obtaining goods from a local relief center, now that the food shortages in Biafra are dragging on. She is aided at first by one of the officials there, a man who remembers how, during peacetime, Olanna had met him in an airport; she had comforted the man's aging mother, who was disconcerted by movements of the airplanes. One day, this man provides Olanna with a tin of corned beef. Unfortunately, after Olanna leaves the center, men gather around her and take the corned beef from her. Other problems arise for Olanna, from fears that Baby is suffering from lice to persistent fears that the area is unsafe. She continues to teach, though, trying to make her students take patriotic pride in Biafra as a country.
Chapter 26 opens with Ugwu's negative impressions of the relief food that is being sent to Biafra. He finds the dried eggs unnatural and the flour tasteless, but he is well aware of the patriotic enthusiasm of men such as Special Julius, Professor Ekwenugo, and Odenigbo himself. Meanwhile, refugees - some bringing their children - have begun to move through the area. Olanna asks Ugwu to help her and Mrs. Muokelu teach some of the local children; he is also invited, by his neighbor Eberechi, to help repair the roof of the local primary school.
Ugwu is asked to take over Mrs. Muokelu's class, since Mrs. Muokelu wants to trade across enemy lines (a process known as afia attack) and will not have time to teach. He accepts the assignment. In a conversation with Eberechi, he learns that she had an awkward sexual experience with an army officer who, in return, gave her brother a favorable military assignment. The war effort takes an inspiring turn when Tanzania formally recognizes Biafra as an independent country. However, Ugwu is upset to find that Eberechi may have taken a new army officer for a lover. A further shock occurs when Odenigbo's household learns that Odenigbo's mother has been shot by enemy soldiers. Odenigbo, despite Olanna's protests, decides to drive to his hometown. Ugwu assures Olanna that Odenigbo will return, but Odenigbo's whereabouts remain unknown as the chapter closes.
Early in Chapter 27, Richard is surprised when Harrison reappears at Kainene's house in Port Harcourt. The servant appears to be covered in bloody bandages, but he is in fact posing as a bomb victim in order to travel more easily; the bandages are simply soaked in beet juice. For his part, Richard was recently approached by Madu, who wants Richard to write about the war effort and is convinced that Richard's status as a white man will be an advantage. Having composed some articles, Richard now feels deeply involved in the fate of Biafra and has even met His Excellency, the head of state Ojukwu. His efforts also put him in touch with Count von Rosen, a Swedish aristocrat who is assisting Biafra by using his private plane to attack the North.
While Richard and his companions hope that Port Harcourt will not be attacked, Kainene has also purchased a house near a refugee camp. Richard discovers, one day, that Biafran soldiers at a road checkpoint will not let him leave Port Harcourt. He returns home, and soon bombers appear. Richard, Kainene, and Harrison survive this raid; however, Kainene's houseboy Ikejide is beheaded by a piece of shrapnel. The surviving members of the household relocate to the other house, so that Kainene can begin her duties as the food supplier for the refugee camp. Working alongside a few priests, she endeavors to maintain order and to make the suffering refugees realize that they have a stake in the new, struggling nation.
In Chapter 28, Olanna feels confident - due to a premonition in a happy dream - that Odenigbo's mother was buried. Odenigbo has, for his part, retuned home. The poet Okeoma also visits in the wake of Odenigbo's loss and reads a poem to Olanna. This poem, which refers to "the mermaid / Who will never be mine," appears to refer to Okeoma's long-running infatuation with Olanna herself. As refugees arrive in Umuahia, Odenigbo's family is forced out of the current house and into a cramped room. Here, Olanna's neighbors include the tough-minded Mama Oji and the reclusive Alice, a pianist whose playing fills the yard of the residence. Olanna begins to bond with this young woman after she brings Alice a bag of salt as a gift; Alice opens up, explaining that she was impregnated by an army colonel and that her baby had died.
Aware that Odenigbo is troubled after the death of his mother and that his work is burdensome, Olanna visits Odenigbo's Nsukka friend Professor Ezeka. She is stunned by the modern luxury of Professor Ezeka's house and the cheeriness of the Professor's wife, though she does secure a promise of assistance and the possibility of a better appointment for Odenigbo. Olanna returns home to learn from Baby that a local dog, Bingo, has been killed and eaten. Kainene eventually pays a visit to Olanna, and the two women recall the events of the war so far, including the bombing during Olanna's wedding and the death of Ikejide. Olanna then travels to Kainene's refugee hospital, where death among the refugees seems inescapable.
Analysis
With Baby's illness early in Part 4, Half of a Yellow Sun raises a pointed question about one of the significant choices that Olanna made in Part 2: was staying in Biafra the right decision? The tickets abroad purchased by Olanna's parents offered Olanna an easy way out for herself and (presumably) for her young daughter. Instead, Olanna has remained behind and has subjected her young family to the dangers of air raids and malnourishment - threats that could have been apparent enough when the advance on Nsukka forced Odenigbo's entire household to flee. Still, a reader should be cautious of criticizing Olanna's decisions too much. Choices that appear reckless or at least unwise in hindsight - or in the context of those disturbing excerpts from The World Was Silent When We Died - could have seemed like temporary sacrifices or necessary risks for a new country, at least at the time.
Olanna is by no means oblivious to the hardships involved in the war effort; she and those around her are aware that she is out of her element and is forced to adapt. At the relief center, she is briefly singled out for her past good deed at the airport. She is also part of a crowd of Biafrans who must struggle for supplies, regardless of background: "Olanna surprised herself by how easily she joined the inward rush of the crowd, how she moved nimbly from line to line, dodged the swinging canes of the militia, pushed back when somebody pushed her" (341). Her contact with less privileged Nigerians is no longer a matter of escaping a materialistic milieu for a more honest, homely lifestyle, as such contact was when she visited Kano during peacetime. Now, the idea that Olanna herself is more privileged - above the crowd and participating by choice, not necessity - has itself been undermined.
Whether Olanna's hardships will contain any meaningful lessons or will simply be self-defeating ordeals is a question that can best be answered in later chapters, in the context of Biafra's ultimate defeat. For the time, the displacement of war is causing other characters to change in ways that are more inspiring than Olanna's identification with an unruly mass. Ugwu, already increasingly thoughtful and well-read, is now himself a teacher: "he loved the light of recognition in the older children's eyes when he explained the meaning of a word" (368). He also loves the recognition that Odenibgo and Eberechi give his efforts; he is winning the esteem of the very man whose own intellectual life has provided a meaningful model for Ugwu since the novel's beginning. With Eberechi, he also harbors the fantasy of a fulfilling sexual and social relationship, one that could be the younger duplicate of Olanna and Odenigbo's sexually active union.
It does not take long, however, for the disastrous course of the war to intrude upon everyday pleasures such as Ugwu's teaching and Olanna's intimacy with her newlywed husband. The death of Odenigbo's mother both saps Odenigbo of patriotic energy and reminds Olanna of a difficult, unresolved stretch of their relationship: "She sensed the layers of grief - he would never know how Mama had died and would always struggle with the old resentments - but she did not feel connected to his mourning" (404). Naturally, Odenigbo is not the only model of Biafran patriotism that the novel has presented, since characters such as Ugwu and Richard remain deeply committed to the fate of the country in their own ways. He is arguably the most militant patriot of Adichie's characters, though; his drinking and his distance from his new wife - his detachment from a marriage that was supposed to coincide with the hopeful start of a new nation - are negative omens, possibly symbols of broader weariness and surrender.
While Adichie's central characters should not be understood as uncommitted to Biafra, there are limitations to how far their commitments extend. Olanna, despite her other sacrifices, is fearful that Ugwu will be conscripted. The young man is of course contributing to the war effort as a civic educator, but Ugwu and Olanna's distaste for combat can seem odd in a society guided by celebrations of Northern defeats and a song called "Biafra Win the War." Kainene, now in charge of a refugee camp, struggles to make the camp's inmates feel patriotic solidarity - yet she herself doubts the efficacy of her efforts to ease suffering and build a new country. None of these moments of despair are unwarranted. However, all of these moments clarify the difficulties, both material and psychological, that the war effort imposes even on those who are most visibly committed to its success.
