Freedom vs Tyranny

Related to the strictness of Papa’s beliefs and the corruption of the Nigerian government is an
important theme of freedom, and its opposite, tyranny. Politically, Papa and Ade Coker represent a
freedom of the press that protests against the censorship and corruption of the Head of State. Aunty
Ifeoma, a university professor, also speaks her mind and criticizes those in power. The political
tyranny in the Nigerian government responds to this assertion of freedom with brutal action. Ade
Coker is assassinated, the Standard and Papa’s factories are shut down, and Ifeoma is fired from the
university. Hope for political freedom only comes in the novel’s last section, when the Head of State
dies and democracy is tentatively restored.

Freedom and tyranny exists among Adichie’s individual characters as well. Though Papa bravely
stands up for political freedom, in the world of his own family—where he is the one in control—he
acts like a tyrant. He allows no freedom or independence for Mama, Kambili, or Jaja. He schedules
his children’s every minute and even chooses the color of the drapes. When anyone acts out or tries
to assert their freedom, he responds with violence. Kambili and Jaja thus get their first real taste of
freedom at Aunty Ifeoma’s house. After seeing this totally different family dynamic—one where all
the children are encouraged to speak their minds and question everything—Kambili and Jaja start
feeling more rebellious and independent. Kambili’s assertion of freedom begins by keeping the
painting of Papa-Nnukwu, while Jaja grows more openly rebellious, refusing to speak to his father
and then refusing to go to church on Palm Sunday. Jaja’s Palm Sunday actions signal a turning point
for the family. The most surprising twist comes at the end, however, as Mama turns to her own kind
of tyranny—murder—to assert her freedom from Papa. This leads to prison for Jaja, which ends up
as just another version of the cycle of freedom and oppression. There is finally some hope with Jaja’s
impending release, which also coincides with the Head of State’s death, as both Nigeria and Kambili’s
family hope to find true freedom at last.

Quotes
Papa was staring pointedly at Jaja. “Jaja, have you not shared a drink with us, gbo? Have you
no words in your mouth?” he asked, entirely in Igbo. A bad sign. He hardly spoke Igbo, and
although Jaja and I spoke it with Mama at home, he did not like us to speak it in public. We
had to sound civilized in public, he told us; we had to speak English. Papa’s sister, Aunty
Ifeoma, said once that Papa was too much of a colonial product. She had said this about
Papa in a mild, forgiving way, as if it were not Papa’s fault…
“Mba, there are no words in my mouth,” Jaja replied.
“What?” There was a shadow clouding Papa’s eyes, a shadow that had been in Jaja’s eyes.
Fear. It had left Jaja’s eyes and entered Papa’s.
“I have nothing to say,” Jaja said.
I lay in bed after Mama left and let my mind rake through the past, through the years when
Jaja and Mama and I spoke more with our spirits than with our lips. Until Nsukka. Nsukka
started it all; Aunty Ifeoma’s little garden next to the verandah of her flat in Nsukka began to
lift the silence. Jaja’s defiance seemed to me now like Aunty Ifeoma’s experimental purple
hibiscus: rare, fragrant with the undertones of freedom, a different kind of freedom from the
one the crowds waving green leaves chanted at Government Square after the coup. A
freedom to be, to do

I did not say anything else until lunch was over, but I listened to every word spoken, followed
every cackle of laughter and line of banter. Mostly, my cousins did the talking and Aunty
Ifeoma sat back and watched them, eating slowly. She looked like a football coach who had
done a good job with her team and was satisfied to stand next to the eighteen-yard box and
watch.

“I hear he’s very involved in the editorial decisions. The Standard is the only paper that dares
to tell the truth these days.”
“Yes,” Aunty Ifeoma said. “And he has a brilliant editor, Ade Coker, although I wonder how
much longer before they lock him up for good. Even Eugene’s money will not buy
everything.”
“I was reading somewhere that Amnesty World is giving your brother an award,” Father
Amadi said. He was nodding slowly, admiringly, and I felt myself go warm all over, with pride,
with a desire to be associated with Papa

“Kambili, you are precious.” His voice quavered now, like someone speaking at a funeral,
choked with emotion. “You should strive for perfection. You should not see sin and walk
right into it.” He lowered the kettle into the tub, tilted it toward my feet. He poured the hot
water on my feet, slowly, as if he were conducting an experiment and wanted to see what
would happen. He was crying now, tears streaming down his face… I watched the water
leave the kettle, flowing almost in slow motion in an arc to my feet. The pain of contact was
so pure, so scalding, I felt nothing for a second. And then I screamed.
“That is what you do to yourself when you walk into sin. You burn your feet,” he said.
Ade Coker was at breakfast with his family when a courier delivered a package to him. His
daughter, in her primary school uniform, was sitting across the table from him. The baby was
nearby, in a high chair. His wife was spooning Cerelac into the baby’s mouth. Ade Coker was
blown up when he opened the package—a package everybody would have known was from
the Head of State even if his wife Yewande had not said that Ade Coker looked at the
envelope and said “It has the State House seal” before he opened it.

Ade Coker was at breakfast with his family when a courier delivered a package to him. His
daughter, in her primary school uniform, was sitting across the table from him. The baby was
nearby, in a high chair. His wife was spooning Cerelac into the baby’s mouth. Ade Coker was
blown up when he opened the package—a package everybody would have known was from
the Head of State even if his wife Yewande had not said that Ade Coker looked at the
envelope and said “It has the State House seal” before he opened it.

“It is not about me, Chiaku.” Aunty Ifeoma paused. “Who will teach Amaka and Obiora in
university?”
“The educated ones leave, the ones with the potential to right the wrongs. They leave the
weak behind. The tyrants continue to reign because the weak cannot resist. Do you not see
that it is a cycle? Who will break that cycle?”

“It’s your father. They called me from the factory, they found him lying dead on his desk.”
Mama sounded like a recording…
Jaja grabbed the phone. Aunty Ifeoma led me to the bed. I sat down and stared at the bag of
rice that leaned against the bedroom wall… I had never considered the possibility that Papa
would die, that Papa could die. He was different from Ade Coker, from all the other people
they had killed. He had seemed immortal.

“I started putting the poison in his tea before I came to Nsukka. Sisi got it for me; her uncle is
a powerful witch doctor.”
For a long, silent moment I could think of nothing… Then I thought of taking sips of Papa’s
tea, love sips, the scalding liquid that burned his love onto my tongue. “Why did you put it in
his tea?” I asked Mama, rising. My voice was loud. I was almost screaming. “Why in his tea?”

There are people, she once wrote, who think that we cannot rule ourselves because the few
times we tried, we failed, as if all the others who rule themselves today got it right the first
time. It is like telling a crawling baby who tries to walk, and then falls back on his buttocks, to
stay there. As if the adults walking past him did not all crawl, once.