The fluidity and ambivalence of Richard as a post-colonialist in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s (2006) Half of a Yellow Sun

Postcolonial theory a rose from anti-slavery and anti-colonial movements in Western and the tricontinental countries, (Africa, East or South East Asia and Latin America.) Postcolonial theory’s aim is to provide a means of defiance by which any exploitative and discriminative practices regardless of time and space can be challenged. Richard, a British citizen and journalist is lured to newly independent Nigeria in the mid-sixties by Igbo Ukwu-art. Before long though, Nigeria which he is trying to adapt to breaks into civil war through a coup (it is suspected) instigated by the Igbo of Southeast Nigeria, a predominantly Christian group dissatisfied with the political colonial imposition of the Islamic Hausa-Fulani of the North on them. A counter coup by the Northerners forces him to align himself with the seceding Igbo who want to form the State of Biafra, to which his girlfriend, Kainene belongs. His journey becomes a struggle to fit in, this grappling on his part as a post-colonialist in Adichie’s text, Half of a Yellow Sun is the trajectory of this paper.  By a rigorous examination of his character through the lens of positivism and pessimism view-points, as critiqued by Young and Slemon it is found as fluid, ambivalent and even outright ambiguous thus failing the litmus test of a postcolonialist