Conclusion
This essay examined themes in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie‘s Half of a Yellow Sun and The Thing Around Your Neck. Through her writings, it is noted that tradition and culture reveal that a woman‘s fundamental purpose in life is to be a mother and a wife and this classification affects several women regardless of their educational standing.
The theme of violence which is central to both novels shows that women are often victims because of their femininity. On the home front in form of objectification and in conflict situations in form of rape which is a weapon of horror. Adichie depicts the perpetuation of violence as an instrument of female oppression and an exhibition of male power and dominance
Emecheta and Adichie also portray the struggles women encounter in their everyday lives and by using strong and independent characters, they showed how women struggle to get their own identity, trying to break free from the circumstances and the constant subordination of women on men through some of her female characters.
In the thing around your neck ‘A Private Experience’ follows Chika who hides from a riot in a house with a Hausa Muslim woman. While the present shows Chika calmly chatting and medically examining the woman, the narrator uses future tense to capture the violence outside, “later, Chika will learn that, as she and the woman are speaking, Hausa Muslims are hacking down Igbo Christians with machetes, clubbing them with stones” (62). This story is an open window into the political and religious conflicts between Igbo Christians and Hausa Muslims in Nigeria.
