Farah Rashid English-255
Prof Fiona Lee Blog.
The Purple Hibiscus Written by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi is indeed very bold. It mentions in dept about issues such as domination, oppression, fear, domestic violence etc. Papa being the dominating figure often abuses Jaja, Kimbili and Mama. In the novel the Purple Hibiscus, the author told the story from a women perspective unlike the novel Things fall apart written by the same author from a male prespective. What fell apart in this novel is the household. Not only that, there is a political unrest in the country and in their household too. In this male dominating arena, women are often ignored resulting in silence and oppression. This novel doesn’t only bring out the women point of view, but also is an intelligent attempt to bring out into the surface what is often purposely ignored, unheard and unseen. One f such example is domestic violence. In Purple Hibiscus, we get a strong sense of silence. Various aspect of silence is introduced here in the text. Therefore we can say that the novel carefully and indeed cleverly explores the theme of silence. Through out the novel we see that Jaja and Kimbili are both victims of violence and are equally silent. However Jaja later becomes very vocal about his own opinion and expresses repression against their abusive father. Unlike Kimbili and Mama, he stood up for himself. The notion of silence could also be described as a consequence of a trauma so deep that it is indeed very hard for one to come out of it. Thus silence slowly observes what cannot be said. Fortunately with time Kimbili slowly unwinds and expresses herself. Unlike before where she silently underwent violence, she now realizes the facts. Another such strong theme in this novel Purple Hibiscus is the notion of freedom. Freedom is indeed very hard to accomplish. In this text Jaja, Kimbili and Mama gets freedom from the abusive Papa. At the end of the novel Mama poisons Papa thus obtaining the much desired freedom. Even thought she frees herself from Papa’s oppression, is she really free ?. According to me, I strongly feel that freedom can not be obtained under any condition it is repetitive. Freedom is therefore a constant cycle, not only that for the rest of their lives they have to live with the hard fact that their Mama killed their Papa. Is this any less then mental torture ? I feel that if one is free he/she is definelty bonded to something else. One such example is Mama. Even through she got freedom from her abusive husband she lost her only son who took up the blame for her to jail. Her son is the price she paid. In conclusion, at the end of the novel we notice that each member of fammily is free but they did pay a heavy price for it. Jaja is imprisoned, Mama loose her son and lives with the mental torture that she herself poisoned her husband and finally Kimbili through whom we see the story is "shattered, broken into pieces and can never be fixed". We also learn that it is possible to love the person who abuses and oppress you.