How Does Adichie Present the Relationship Between Richard and Kainene in This Extract?

Extract 1

How does Adichie present the relationship between Richard and Kainene in this extract?

Kainene greeted him with a stoic face in the morning.

The rain was heavy on the roof and the overcast sky cast a pallor over the dining room. Kainene sat drinking a cup of tea and reading a newspaper with the light on.

'Harrison is making pancakes,' she said, and turned back to her paper. Richard sat opposite her, unsure of what to do, too guilty even to pour his tea. Her silence and the noises and smells from the kitchen made him feel claustrophobic.

'Kainene,' he said. 'Can we speak, please?'

She looked up, and he noticed, first, that her eyes were swollen and raw, and then he saw the wounded rage in them. 'We will talk when I want to talk, Richard.'

He looked down, like a child being reprimanded, and felt, again, afraid that she would ask him to get out of her life forever.

The doorbell rang before noon and, when Ikejide came in to say the madam's sister was at the door, Richard thought that Kainene would ask him to shut the door in Olanna's face. But she didn't. She asked Ikejide to serve drinks and went down to the living room and from the top of the stairs where he stood, Richard tried to hear what was said. He heard Olanna's tearful voice but could not make out what she was saying. Odenigbo spoke briefly, in a tone that was unusually calm. Then Richard heard Kainene's voice, clear and crisp. 'It is stupid to expect me to forgive this.'

There was a short silence and then the sound of the door being opened. Richard hurried to the window to see Odenigbo's car backing out, the same blue Opel that had parked in his own compound on Imoke Street before Odenigbo bounded out, a stocky man in well-ironed clothes shouting, 'I want you to stay away from my house! Do you understand me? Stay away! Don't ever come to my house again!' He had stood in front of the veranda and wondered if Odenigbo would punch him. Later, he realised that Odenigbo did not intend to punch him, perhaps did not consider him worthy of a punch, and the thought had depressed him.

'Did you eavesdrop?' Kainene asked, walking into the room. Richard turned away from the window, but she didn't wait for his response before she added, mildly, 'I'd forgotten how much the revolutionary looks like a wrestler, really - but one with finesse.'

'I will never forgive myself if I lose you, Kainene.'

Her face was expressionless. 'I took your manuscript from the study this morning and I burnt it,' she said.

Richard felt a soar in his chest of emotions he could not name. 'The Basket of Hands', the collection of pages that he was finally confident could become a book, was gone. He could never duplicate the unbridled energy that had come with the words. But it did not matter. What mattered was that by burning his manuscript she had shown him that she would not end the relationship; she would not bother to cause him pain if she was not going to stay. Perhaps he was not a true writer after all. He had read somewhere that, for true writers, nothing was more important than their art, not even love.

Extract 2

Read the extract below and discuss what we learn about Odenigbo's character:

Olanna glanced at her watch although she did not need to. It was too early for Odenigbo to be home. He was sitting on their bed, his back hunched, his shoulders heaving silently.

'O gini? What happened?' she asked.

'Nothing happened.'

She went to him. 'Ebezina, stop crying,' she murmured. But she did not want him to stop. She wanted him to cry and cry until he dislodged the pain that clogged his throat, until he rinsed away his sullen grief. She cradled him, wrapped her arms around him, and slowly he relaxed against her. His arms circled her. His sobs became audible. With each intake of breath, they reminded her of Baby; he cried like his daughter.

'I never did enough for Mama,' he said finally.

'It's okay,' she murmured. She, too, wished she had tried harder with his mother before settling for easy resentment. There was so much she would take back if she could.

'We never actively remember death,' Odenigbo said. 'The reason we live as we do is because we do not remember that we will die. We will all die.'

'Yes,' Olanna said; there was a slump to his shoulders.

'But perhaps it is the whole point of being alive? That life is a state of death denial?' he asked.

Olanna cradled him closer.

'I've been thinking of the army, nkem,' he said. 'Maybe I should join His Excellency's new S-brigade.'

Olanna said nothing for a while. She felt the urge to yank at his new beard and pull out hair and draw blood. 'You might as well find a sturdy tree and a rope, Odenigbo, because that's an easier way to commit suicide,' she said.

He moved back to look at her, but she kept her gaze averted and got up and turned on the radio and increased the volume, filling the room with the sound of a Beatles song; she would no longer discuss this desire to join the army.

'We should build a bunker,' he said, and went to the door. 'Yes, we certainly need a bunker here.'

The flat glassiness in his eyes, the slump to his shoulders, worried her. If he had to do something, though, better he build a bunker than join the army.

Outside, he was talking to Papa Oji and some of the other men who were standing by the compound entrance.

'Don't you see those banana trees?' Papa Oji asked. 'All the air raids we have had, we went there, and nothing happened to us. We don't need a bunker. Banana trees absorb bullets and bombs.'

Odenigbo's eyes were as cold as his response. 'What does an army deserter know about bunkers?'

He left the men and, moments later, he and Ugwu started to map out and dig an area behind the building. Soon, the young men joined in the work and, when the sun fell, the older ones did too, including Papa Oji. Olanna watched them work and wondered what they thought of Odenigbo. When the other men cracked jokes and laughed, he did not. He spoke only about the work. No, mba, move it farther down. Yes, let's hold it there. No, shift it a little. His sweaty singlet clung to his body and she noticed, for first time, how much weight he had lost, how shrunken his chest looked.

That night, she lay with her cheek against his. He had not told her what made him stay home to cry for his mother. She hoped, though, that whatever it was would loosen some of the knots that had tightened inside him. She kissed his neck, his ear, in the way that always made him pull her close on the nights that Ugwu slept out on the veranda. But he shrugged her hand off and said, 'I'm tired, nkem.' She had never heard him say that before. He smelt of old sweat, and she felt a sudden piercing longing for that Old Spice left behind in Nsukka.

Extract 3

How doesAdichie present Westerner attitudes towards Biafra in the following extract?

The redhead did not laugh. 'We don't know for sure that it was Nigerian fire. The Biafrans could have put it on.'

'Oh, come on!' The plump one glanced at Richard, but Richard kept his face straight. 'Of course it was Nigerian fire.'

'The Biafrans are mixing up foods and guns in their planes, anyway,' the redhead said. He turned to Richard. 'Aren't they?'

Richard disliked him. He disliked his washed-out green eyes and his red-freckled face. When he had met them at the airport and handed them their passes and told them he would be their guide and that the Biafran government welcomed them, he had disliked the redhead's expression of scornful amusement. It was as if he were saying, You are speaking for the Biafrans?

'Our relief planes carry only food supplies,' Richard said.

'Of course,' the redhead said. 'Only food supplies.'

The plump one leaned across Richard to look out of the window. 'I can't believe people are driving cars and walking around. It's not like there's a war going on.'

'Until an air raid happens,' Richard said. He had moved his face back and was holding his breath.

'Is it possible to see where the Biafran soldiers shot the Italian oil worker?' the redhead asked. 'We've done something on that at the Tribune, but I'd like to do a longer feature.'

'No, it's not possible,' Richard said sharply.

The redhead was watching him. 'Okay. But can you tell me anything new?'

Richard exhaled. It was like somebody sprinkling pepper on his wound: Thousands of Biafrans were dead, and this man wanted to know if there was anything new about one dead white man. Richard would write about this, the rule of Western journalism: One hundred dead black people equal one dead white person. 'There is nothing new to tell,' he said. 'The area is occupied now.'

At the checkpoint, Richard spoke Igbo to the civil defender. She examined their passes and smiled suggestively and Richard smile back; her thin, tall, breastlessness reminded him of Kainene.

'She looked like she was real interested,' the plump one said. 'I hear there's a lot of free sex here. But the girls have some kind of sexually transmitted disease? The Bonny disease? You guys have to be careful so you don't take anything back home.'

His presumptuousness annoyed Richard. 'The refugee camp we are going to is run by my wife.'

'Really? She been here long?'

'She's Biafran.'

The redhead had been staring out of the window; he turned now toward Richard. 'I had an English friend at college who really went for coloured girls.'

The plump one looked embarrassed. He spoke quickly. 'You speak Igbo pretty well?'

'Yes,' Richard said. He wanted to show them the photos of Kainene and the roped pot, but then he thought better of it.

'I'd love to meet her,' the plump one said.

'She's away today. She's trying to get more supplies for the camp.'

He climbed out of the car first and saw the two interpreters waiting. Their presence annoyed him. It was true that idioms and nuances and dialects often eluded him in Igbo, but the directorate was always too prompt in sending interpreters. Most of the refugees sitting outside watched them with vague curiosity. An emaciated man was walking around, a dagger strapped to his waist, talking to himself. Rotten smells hung heavy in the air. A group of children was roasting two rats around a fire.

'Oh, my God.' The plump one removed his hat and stared.

'Niggers are never choosy about what they eat,' the redhead muttered.

Extract 4

Discuss the following passage in detail, paying particular attention to ways in which Adichie presents the characters and the change in their relationship.

“Sorry,” Odenigbo said, when he got in. He did not say anything about what he and his mother had talked about until they were driving past the campus gates in Nsukka, an hour later. “Mama doesn’t want to keep the baby.”

“She doesn’t want to keep the baby?”

“No.”

Olanna knew why. “She wanted a boy.”

“Yes.” Odenigbo removed a hand from the steering wheel to roll his window farther down. She found a guilty pleasure in the humility he had cloaked himself in since Amala gave birth. “We’ve agreed that the baby will stay with Amala’s people. I’ll go to Abba next week to see them and discuss—”

“We’ll keep her,” Olanna said. She startled herself by how clearly she had articulated the desire to keep the baby and how right it felt. It was as if it was what she had always wanted to do.

Odenigbo turned to her with eyes widened behind his glasses. He was driving so slowly over a speed bump that she feared the car would stall. “Our relationship is the most important thing to me,nkem,” he said quietly. “We have to make the right decision for us.”

“You were not thinking about us when you got her pregnant,” Olanna said, before she could help herself; she hated the malice in her tone, the renewed resentment she felt.

Odenigbo parked the car in the garage. He looked tired. “Let’s think about this.”

“We’ll keep her,” Olanna said firmly.

She could raise a child, his child. She would buy books about motherhood and find a wet nurse and decorate the bedroom. She shifted this way and that in bed that night. She had not felt sorry for the child. Instead, holding that tiny, warm body, she had felt a conscious serendipity, a sense that this may not have been planned but had become, the minute it happened, what was meant to be. Her mother did not think so; her mother’s voice over the phone line the next day was grave, the solemn tone that would be used to talk about somebody who had died.

“Nne, you will have your own child soon. It is not right for you to raise the child he had with a village girl he impregnated as soon as you travelled. Raising a child is a very serious thing to undertake, my daughter, but in this case it is not the right thing.”

Olanna held the phone and stared at the flowers on the centre table. One of them had fallen off; it was surprising that Ugwu had forgotten to remove it. There was truth in her mother’s words, she knew, and yet she knew, also, that the baby had looked like she had always imagined her and Odenigbo’s child would, with the lush hair and widely spaced eyes and pink gums.

“Her people will give you trouble,” her mother said. “The woman herself will give you trouble.”

“She doesn’t want the child.”

“Then leave it with her people. Send them what is needed but leave the child there.”

Olanna sighed. “Anugo m, I’ll give this more thought.”

She put the phone down and picked it up again and gave the operator Kainene’s number in Port Harcourt. The woman sounded lazy, made her repeat the number a few times and giggled before connecting her.