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MICAS ANTONIO ZANDAMELA

APH 105 AFRICAN THOUGHT IN AFRICAN LITERATURE I
PROFESSOR CHENNELS
23 February 2021

Spaces In Purple Hibiscus.

The Different Domestic Spaces in Nsukka, Enugu and Abba but Also the Public Markets,

The Sports Field Where Father Amadi’s Football Team Practice and the Sites Where the

Markets Process and Where the Marian Pilgrimage Is Held.

Do These Spaces Reflect Our Inner and Outer Lives and Our Public and Private

Consciousness?

Purple hibiscus is a mix of different sites of civilization. Adiche in her novel is

combining different people’s characters, names of different places as symbols for

different sides’ cultures, which in one hand they represent different way of doing

things at different levels. Purple hibiscus discusses the different ways of doing things

how they can mix each other and form a solid system of living in the modern world.

Those places are topoi of different ideas or concepts. In the novel, there are

two or have more different cultures and traditions to be integrated. Moreover, we find

in this novel representation of the revolutionary changes that occur during Kambili’s

and Jaja’s moving from an oppressed situation to the freedom. Three years after

going to Nsukka, Kambili narrates her story and includes on it different domestic and

public spaces where her and her brother Jaja growth takes place.

The different sites which kambili is referring to, reflect the different senses of

understanding of the Nigerian society. I think Adiche’s thesis is all about making sure

that it is possible to make changes at different levels of the society. She

demonstrates how she has understood the modernity and then criticizes that way of
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doing things. Throughout the novel, it is clear that that kind of society does not

accommodate all the needs of the women and the people of the future.

Enugu is a place or topoi for abuse, for silence, and for oppression.

Furthermore, it is a place where there is no interaction of ideas. The practice of

democracy at Enugu is not recognized as something relevant, however, it is called a

democracy of silence, where the educated people are those who keep quiet and do

not complain. Where the voices of the majority poor will not be heard. Therefore, the

women and children do little to build the society.

Eugene’s newspaper speaks the truth, affirms Kambili. ‘Papa said, with an

offhand pride, while scanning another paper. “Change of Guard’ ‘what a headline’…

She admires. They are all afraid; it is said on the newspaper. Writing about how

corrupted the civilian government is… (25).’ In the novel, the suggestion is that the

Nigerian struggle is all about democracy and democracy means allowing the voice of

the people to shape society.

For instance, if we consider in that way, the Nigerian’s Anxieties are all about

building the human dignity and the real democracy. Moreover, the article maintains

that ‘this country is going down, way down (26).’ There is a kind of contradiction

between how Eugene performs at home with his family and what his employees

write in the newspaper for the public.

Kambili and jaja, at home keeping ask only questions that they already know

the answers, because they know the kind of answers they will get from Eugene. This

is a sort of colonialism in a way, that has the truth already. They do not want to

express what they know; either they will not tell that Eugene beats their mother; that

he is brut in his relation with them and with their mother. They all have to learn to

speak and articulate what they really feel and want.

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Nsukka is a topoi of liberation, topoi of freedom, and a place where ideas can

be voiced; there is a big space for choosing. For the first time they start to realize the

possibility of choice. It is also a place where both catholic ideas and tradition ideas

are allowed to interact each other. That is where the children find a purple hibiscus

plants. The purple hibiscus plant symbolizes the existence of the dialogue within

different kind of cultures.

In Nsukka, at the University environment, they discover new ways of doing

things. They discover ‘A freedom, to be, and a freedom to do… my memories did not

start at Nsukka… when all the hibiscuses in our front yard were a startling red (16).’

The Intellectual environment hybridizes ideas that are not traditionally Africans and

they start to have an affective dialogue in Nsukka.

The four places in the novel such as Enugu, Abba, Father Amadi’s field, and

Nsukka are means of transformation in their lives. Their house and school at Enugu

are like sophisticated prisons, because Eugene is a presence of authority/ ghost’.

While in the Nsukka environment, they enjoy sufficient space for human

development. For instance, the novel suggests that Kambili’s sense of femininity at

the field of father Amadi’s football field starts to grow and she gains strength when

she comes closer to Father Amadi, there also she starts to lose her disability of

speaking. However, at the end she falls in love with him.

The Marian Pilgrimage where the Marian vigil takes place, is a place where

ideas are mixed; we are all asked to offer our diversity. Father Amadi says; ‘I don’t

believe that we have to go to Aokpe or anywhere else to find her’ (137) meaning Our

Lady. For Father Amadi God is where the people are but sometimes we need

pilgrimages, we need some rules as well as need a physical confirmation of our

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believe. Many people need a visual assurance of the presence of Gog and some

they do not need it at all.

Father Amadi has a different way of interpretation of the sacred. The

fundamentalists like Father Benedict and Eugene would find it controversial. For

them all rules have to be followed in a detailed way if God is to be approached.

At the markets, we encounter different ways of interpreting things. We see the

military government oppressing the people but we also see this oppression from the

peoples’ point of view.

However, things always have their end as we see in the first chapter that

‘things started to fall apart. (1) In the novel, she narrates the events that show things

falling apart. The body when is tired to hold on things that are superfluous; when it

cannot support anymore the weight of useless ideas it will surely find a way to free

itself. Things that were hidden, now start appearing in various ways (from inner to

outer), but that kind of society as such continues seeing these things as normal ones

to occur. The public has a reduced consciousness, as we can see from the

perspective of how the society responds to it.

Colonialism represents an authority of alienation of the society. The idea of

autonomy is of course one of the reasons of the breaking of the gods. Father

Benedict does not allow Igbo songs, the mass should be said in Latin, and he

imposes English and Latin on the liturgy to be used at mass. In addition, ‘Papa

hardly spokes Igbo, and although Jaja and I spoke it with Mama at home, he did not

like us to speak it in public… Aunty Ifeoma, said once that Papa was too much of a

colonial product. (13)’

Domestic place is constantly beginning to resemble the public place. There is

an authoritarian regime at home and an authoritarianism regime as it is the political

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system of the country. ‘… the standard had written many stories about the cabinet

ministers who stashed money in foreign bank account… but what we Nigerians

needed was not soldiers ruling us… we needed a renewed democracy’ (25). In a

kind of joining her opinion, I would say that there is a need of the renewal of

constitutions and a change on Eugene’s behavior as well.

The visiting of the new priest at Saint Agnes brings something new and

perhaps strange for the Christians Faithful’s experience. During mass, the visiting

priest says the Mass in a red robe that seems too short for him… He is young, and

he looks up often as he reads the gospel… he kisses the Bible slowly when he is

done… (28). ‘It could have seemed dramatic if someone else had done it…’ (28).

Saying so, Kambili suggests that this young priest, the way he presides the

ceremony though he celebrates in a well-decorated altar, with a red robe, he does it

in such a way that the congregation experiences an interaction between religion and

their own culture.

He draws into an Igbo son and the congregation joins in a collective breath,

some have their mouth in a big O they are used to father Benedict’s sparse sermon

Kambili watches Papa pursing his lips. Papa is looking into their side to see whether

they are singing and he moves approvingly when he sees their sealed lips. They

have always to act in such a way that pleases him (28).

As usual after mass, they drop in to visit Father Benedict. Mama is not feeling

well because of her pregnancy. She feels about to vomit, but that is not the case.

She has to obey not to her natural state of pregnancy but to obey Papa’s command

and she is never allowed to disagree with his argument. She argues then Papa will

not let it in go even though she is pregnant. ‘…How are you, Beatrice? Father

Benedict asked, raising his voice so Mama would hear from the living room. You do
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not look well. I am fine, Father. It is only my allergies because of the weather… 30.’

For instance, being sick in public is forbidden at all, it is a sign of uncivilized people

according to Eugene, perhaps a sign of disobedience.

On the novel we have many images of gods of oppression which in some

sense people are very attached, like those of the figurines, that represent a shrine of

Western culture ‘which Mama polished often’ (6). Therein, these spaces reflect on

our inner and outer lives and our public and private consciousness. In Enugu the red

hibiscus plant, suggests that here is the place where the leader is the only one who

determines what to do.

Lastly, in order to answer the main question of the essay, spaces throughout

the novel I conclude that these spaces reflect our Inner and outer lives and our

public and private consciousness. Moreover, In order to validate my argument I

maintain that even in the Marian pilgrimage where people gather. There is a sense of

consciousness in what they experiment. However, it is for a common good that the

Church traditionally conserved these elements of Faith.

Looking at the perspective of hibiscuses the different topoi at the same

society can be allowed to join in different ways whereby red and purple hibiscuses

would build a good society. Where people of the same society can contribute and

interact healthily. They can be offered opportunities of growing together in a

democratic way of doing things, where there are no longer the gods of oppression.

The red hibiscus in the novel can as well mean those ideas that are grown by the

colonial system such as religion, the political system and the cultural ideas, which

are truly the sorts of common goods too.

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Bibliography

Adichie, C. (2005). Purple Hibiscus. Harare: Weaver Press.

Dangarembga, T. (1988). Nervous Conditions. Harare: Zimbabwe Publishing House.

Gadamer, H.-G. (1977). Philosophical Hermeneutics (1st paperback ed.). (D. E. Linge, Ed.,

& D. E. Linge, Trans.) Berkeley: University of California Press.

Palmer, R. E. (1969). Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey,

Heidegger, and Gadamer (6th (1982) ed.). (J. e. Wild, Ed.) Evanston, IL:

Northwestern University Press.