Purple Hibiscus

casually.” (Purple Hibiscus, 140-141) In the novel, Purple Hibiscus, silence is a major theme. Kambili a fifteen year old girl is perceived as a shy girl who is trapped underneath all this silence. Throughout the story we see a series of events unfold, many which silence…

Purple Hibiscus takes place in post-colonial Enugu, Nigeria and it revolves around the seemingly perfect Achike family, with the main character and narrator being Kambili aged 15 an introvert and her older brother Jaja, who also is an introvert and excels at school. Mama (Beatrice), seems to be the tape holding this fragile family together and then there Papa Eugene; a stauch catholic, successful businessman, newspaper publisher, philantrophist among other attributes who still with all this,…

During the novel, “Purple Hibiscus” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the main character Kambili, struggles through child abuse from her father. Her father, Eugene, is a very holy man and is very strict with his children. Eugene is loving and caring except for his punishments, which are not discipline but torture. When Eugene finds Kambili and Jaja observing a painting of their grandfather (who is not catholic) Eugene kicks Kambili until she has to be put in the hospital. After Kambili is released…

The experience that kambili has at ifeoma’s Nsukka leads her towards self –realization. She understands clearly that how her aunty sets goals for her children and how she encourages them to jump higher. She realizes the fate that she excels only because she is terrified of being punished by her father if she fails. For kambili Nsukka does not represent a town where her aunty lives but a symbol of freedom, courage and power. At Nsukka only” her mouth which is always closed seems to be performing…

Women are an integral part of human civilization and there is no general development of a society or country without an active participation and uplift of women. Though the status of women is different from culture to culture and changes from age to age, the truth is that women have never been considered equal to men. They have always been victims of male domination and oppression and treated like beasts of burden and objects of pleasure. From the past, men have looked down upon women as the…

Silence plays a significant role in Adichie’s novel “Purple Hibiscus” this is prevalent through the relationship Kambili has with her immediate and extended family. Throughout the novel one can identify how kambilis relationship with her family develops, when this occurs one notices the function that silence has, this in turn represents the maturity and the development of character through the use of language and the different forms silence. At the beginning of the novel silence represents…

The novel Purple Hibiscus, written by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is not only her first ever book that she has written but has also received the most critical attention since its publication in 2004. In this essay I would like to discuss the roles that the cousins play in Kambili and Jaja’s lives and more precisely discuss what and how the actions has impacted on their lives. The main character, Kambili is the narrator of this novel. She narrates it in a very basic and generalized…

Domestic Violence in Purple Hibiscus Questions for discussion: 1. What has made Papa such a violent father? 2. What kinds of things trigger his violence? 3. Why don’t his wife and children actively resist his violence earlier? 4. What do you think of Amaka’s statement “Some people can’t handle stress”? 5. Do you think Mama’s action was justified? 6. Why do you think Jaja wanted to take the blame for her crime? 7. What kind of message does the novel as a whole…

free, courageous and powerful. At the end, she seems to be an optimist, longing for a new, fresh life and obviously she smiles whole-heartedly. She says that”the new rains will come down soon”(307) which symbolizes that a new life is yet to start. Beatrice suffers all the effects of patriarchal domination perpetuated by her husband and Igbo culture. But gradually she seems to be losing her patience. She thinks independently to quit domestic abuse. So she kills her husband. Both the…

draws a parallel between the violent father figure and authoritarian military rule. As kambili’s family begins to resist the patriarch, a similar parallel develops between the growing resistances to violent authority on a national scale. Purple Hibiscus’s opening chapter sets the context for the story by describing the bourgeois furnishings of the home, such as the mother’s porcelain ballet dancer figurines and the “gold-framed family photo”(3), and by contrasting these idyllic…