CONTEXTUALIZING THE PERSPECTIVES OF WAR IN FLORA NWAPA'S NEVER AGAIN AND CHIMAMANDA ADICHIE'S HALF OF A YELLOW SUN

The Nigerian Civil War was preceded by quite a number of remarkable symptoms which clearly portrayed that the young independent nation was sick and in dire need of healing. Needless to say that if the leaders at the helm of affairs at that point in the nation's history had concertedly, dutifully and patriotically administered the appropriate laxatives in their required dosages as competent physicians would have done, the nation would have been cured of her myriad of sicknesses, at least to a reasonable and survivable extent without fighting a regrettable war. It was, rather, the negligence or inability of leaders to effectively treat the seriously sick patient that resulted to a deterioration of her conditions. Over the years, both historians and literary artists have tried to unravel these deadly symptoms as well as how and why they were not resolutely addressed by the physicians whose constitutional responsibility it was to do so. Flora Nwapa's Never Again and Chimamanda Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun are two significant efforts by literary artists to identify these symptoms as well as the underlying reasons for their negligence by the physicians. Using New Historicism as a critical model, this study contextualizes the perspectives of the war in the two aforementioned historical novels.