Entry no.50

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Purple Hibiscus

Annie Gagiano

Despite Adichie’s assertion of enormous admiration for her famous Nigerian compatriot and fellow Igbo, Chinua Achebe, associating these two authors would not readily come to most readers’ minds. In the first place, the centre of consciousness in Adichie’s text is a young girl’s; and secondly (an especially noticeable difference), the depiction of the chief male figure as a paterfamilias is considerably more scornful than Achebe’s carefully balanced evocations of figures like Okonkwo and Ezeulu. Indeed, this young author’s portrayal of her main character, Kambili’s father, (Eugene) fills the reader with increasingly indignant wrath at the psychic as well as physical abuse that he inflicts on his family members – something that is gradually revealed in its full horror.

In fact, like our local writer Zahzah Khuzwayo in Never Been at Home (2004), or like Naguib Mahfouz’s depiction of al-Saiid Ahmad in Palace Walk (translated 1991), Adichie’s text depicts a figure that would be considered stereotypical if the evocation were not so painfully convincing, vivid and detailed: that of the family tyrant who simultaneously maintains an elaborate façade of impeccable fatherhood and of a socially estimable or even heroic figure. Adichie’s father figure (Eugene, or “Papa” to the narrator Kambili and her older brother) is just such a hypocrite – though this term makes him seem simpler and less monstrous than her depiction of him. What compounds the devil’s brew of factors that have combined to produce Eugene is especially and paradoxically his devotion to religion – Christianity, in the denominational (institutional) form of Roman Catholicism. But Eugene is a ritualist; his piety is both formalistic and fanatical, as if he is constantly compelled to display his commitment to his church. To make clear that her text is neither an attack on the male gender nor on Catholic Christianity, Adichie has made a young priest one of the strong figures of hope and healing in Kambili’s life.

She is only fifteen when the narrative begins – loving and loyal by inclination, intellectually gifted and also pure-minded, but plagued by a perpetual, uneasy anxiety caused by the unnaturally rigid standards (particularly those concerning Christian observances) that have been set for the whole family by her father. There is no joy in their family life, especially not in their father’s presence, while he, too, is clearly not a happy man. Almost a textbook illustration of the New Testamental insistence that, however fortunate, pious, successful, wealthy or gifted some persons are, they will be empty vessels if they do not have love, Eugene relentlessly pursues the avenues to the reputation for being “a good man” that are open to a person as wealthy as he is. He donates huge sums to the church, behaves with enormous (financial) generosity towards those in need of monetary aid (as long as they are Christians and of the same denomination as himself) and uses the newspaper he owns to criticise the corrupt practices of the government in power.

Adichie exposes, in this text, the ugly underbelly of a leading figure of resistance to neo-colonial power abuse. Adamantly refusing to pay anyone bribes in a corruption-riddled society, Eugene’s whole life is an attempt to bribe God through the intercessions (and manipulations) of the local priest – a kindred spirit. The writer makes us see that this man who, to anyone without sufficient knowledge of his conduct might have seemed admirably courageous, genuinely principled and selfless, subtly ensures that the most dangerous political risks (under a repressive government) are taken by the eloquent, committed, and truly brave as well as warm-hearted newspaper editor whom he employs: a man who ends up incarcerated and not long afterwards assassinated – dead for “causing trouble” to the regime. Of course, Eugene richly compensates the widow and children of the murdered man financially, but – without there being a suggestion of actual betrayal – it is clear that Eugene’s huge wealth has protected him from sharing the same fate. The vicious regime has been toppled by the time the novel ends, but this fact seems largely incidental to the way “family politics” has unfolded (in a regime change of its own) during the course of the narrative.

Adichie indeed explicitly points the parallel-in-contrast between national and family politics in an early passage, where Kambili reminisces as follows:

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 [her brother’s] defiance [of their father] seemed to me now like Aunty Ifemeona’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. (16)

One of Eugene’s fanaticisms – perhaps even the source of his underlying insecurity that keeps surging up as aggression, is his complete rejection of indigenous culture and religious practices. Because of it, he has completely ostracised his own elderly father, who lives in comparative poverty, and whom he allows his children to visit only once a year, for fifteen (carefully counted) minutes. When the children on a rare occasion go to stay with their widowed aunt Ifeoma (Eugene’s sister) and her children at Nsukka, he attempts to control their time schedule even there. He weeps as they leave – perhaps out of love, but also in anxiety at his temporary loss of control over his children.

The visit revolutionises Kambili’s and her brother Jaja’s lives – more painfully and slowly for Kambili, who has been more harshly emotionally repressed than her brother. Jaja soon blossoms in the uninhibited atmosphere of their dynamic aunt’s somewhat dingy flat in the university estate where she lives, and it is her love of plants that provides both the title image and the actual slips of purple hibiscus that they later transplant into the front yard of their own luxuriously appointed but oppressive home. Jaja, too, carries both emotional and physical scars from his father’s abuse, but his aunt’s knowledge of their actual domestic circumstances and her encouraging affection help him towards healing and growth.

Kambili learns, by beginning to love and by feeling cherished by her aunt’s friend, to know the vital and profoundly humane young priest Father Amadi. She sees by his example that true fathering (or mothering) is fostering, combined with the setting of high standards that younger people are invited, rather than compelled and intimidated (as is her own father’s practice), to meet. And this “invitational” style of parenting, she learns, is inspired by belief in the youngsters’ abilities and worth – a notion, and a practice, implicitly contrasting with her own father’s profound distrust of his children, evinced in his relentlessly disciplinarian rule over them. After their return from Nsukka, he punishes both children by terribly scalding their feet for having temporarily cohabited with a “heathen” (194) – their own benign, beloved and dignified grandfather, who had also been brought to stay at their aunt’s!

It is as if Eugene’s cruel hysteria intensifies as he senses the gradual loosening of his grip on his children. When he finds them gazing lovingly at a drawing of their deceased grandfather, he seizes and destroys it and frenziedly assaults Kambili when she curls herself around the torn pieces of her grandfather’s picture – an excruciating scene even only to read about. She is so badly injured by his brutal kicking that she has to be taken to hospital, unconscious from the pain of her damaged body. Hearing of the incident, her aunt comes to take Kambili and Jaja to Nsukka for another and longer stay. While they are there, the relationship between Father Amadi and Kambili intensifies (although it remains “technically” platonic). Father Amadi helps Kambili to regain faith in and respect for herself.

While they are there, their mother unexpectedly arrives at the flat. She, too, has been in hospital. Eugene had yet again taken out his insecurities on her, yet again causing her to abort the baby she had been carrying. But she rejects their aunt’s advice that she should leave Eugene, calling her suggestion “university talk” (251). Even so, things have irrevocably changed for this family. As they return, they see that the transplanted purple hibiscus cuttings are about to bloom. For the first time, Jaja openly stands up to his father. Their mother’s rebellion runs deeper and more dangerously, for, unbeknown to the children, she has (we learn) been quietly, over a number of weeks, administering a deadly poison to their father in his tea. Yet Jaja will not allow her to be exposed for the murder and he steps in to take the blame for it and face the prosecution – and is sentenced to life imprisonment in a terrible jail.

Nevertheless, when a regime change occurs at last, after some years, and by knowing and bribing the “right” people, Kambili and her mother manage to secure Jaja’s release. Clearly all the survivors in this family are irretrievably damaged, perhaps especially Jaja (in the end), but it is also evident that they have set foot on a road to recovery. Father Amadi has been sent to minister in Germany and their own cousins have gone to live in the United States, but the connections among them remain strong and close. On their way to one of their last jail visits to Jaja, Kambili describes her and her mother’s mood by associating it with the atmosphere of Nsukka, where her aunt used to live:

As we drove back to Enugu, I laughed loudly, above Fela’s stringent singing. I laughed because Nsukka’s untarred roads coat cars with dust in the harmattan and with sticky mud in the rainy season. Because the tarred roads spring potholes like surprise presents and the air smells of hills and history and the sunlight scatters the sand and turns it into gold dust. Because Nsukka could free something deep inside your belly that would rise up to your throat and come out as a freedom song. as laughter. (299)

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