Silence In Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple

Activist, humanitarian, and leader of the African American Civil rights movement Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people” (brainyquotes.com). Silence is more tragic than the cruelty that ties into the repercussions of oppression, as silence prevents the oppressed from battling those repercussions. This concept of oppression through censorship correlates to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus, in which the main character, Kambili Achike, along with her mother, and brother live under constant fear and censorship from their father, Eugene Achike. Eugene, or Papa, keeps his family in line with his tight principles and excludes expression of ideas, causing constant silence. The fact is that the entire family has nothing to say if it doesn’t conform to Papa’s principles, but it also goes beyond that as Eugene controls the activities his family participates in with schedules, giving his family …show more content…
In other words Eugene uses silence as a way to control the words that Kambili and her family use subjecting them to phrases only Eugene approves of. Even when Papa brings home products from his factor for his family to try, he makes sure their criticisms do not have negative connotations towards the product, making them less than helpful: “as he brings a new product home from his factories to be assessed by his reticent family who have become so dopey in their pathetic state of taciturnity, created by his phallocentricism” (Okuyade 247). So when Jaja chooses to defy his father and reject his place as an opinion less underling, his father remains aghast, as this is the first time he has faced rebellion from one of his