Postcolonialism

This study interrogates the notion of recodification as an act of resistance in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Chigozie Obioma’s An Orchestra of Minorities. Though separated by decades, both novels converge thematically in their defiance of cultural erasure and their reclamation of Igbo indigenous identity through narrative innovation. The research analyses how Achebe and Obioma adapt, bend, and blend language employing proverbs, idioms, myth, cosmology, and oral tradition not merely as stylistic choices but as deliberate strategies of epistemic and cultural resistance against colonial and neo-colonial forces. Using a qualitative, interpretive methodology grounded in close reading and informed by postcolonial theory and cultural studies, the study examines narrative structure, symbolic representation, and linguistic hybridity to uncover how both authors recode English to carry Igbo rhythms, ontologies, and worldviews. Building on the works of Said, Bhabha, Spivak, Ngũgĩ, and Hall, the analysis demonstrates that recodification functions as a decolonial praxis a recentering of African epistemologies within global literary discourse. The thesis argues that both Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Obioma’s An Orchestra of Minorities use recodification through the adaptation, bending, and blending of language, myth, and oral tradition as tools for resisting colonial and modern dislocation, rewriting identity, and reclaiming cultural power.

This study examines the impact of war on the family as reflected in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun and Sefi Atta’s Everything Good Will Come. It explores how war and political instability destroy family ties, distort affection, and transform domestic life into a site of suffering and endurance. Both writers reveal that conflict extends beyond the battlefield, invading personal spaces and reshaping identity and human relationships. Through the Postcolonial Theory, the study interprets how historical oppression, power struggle, and the search for belonging continue to influence the African social order. It analyses the themes, characterisation, and dialogue of the two novels to show how war breeds trauma, silence, and loss within homes. The findings show that both Adichie and Atta represent the family as a mirror of the nation. In Half of a Yellow Sun, the Biafran War dismembers homes and leaves emotional ruins that reflect the nation’s tragedy. In Everything Good Will Come, dictatorship, social inequality, and moral repression recreate a form of domestic war that stifles growth and love. The research concludes that African women writers use the family setting as a platform for recording the psychological aftermath of national crises. It contributes to scholarship by revealing that the true cost of war is not only in the number of the dead but in the brokenness that lingers within the living.