School of Distance Education

Purple Hibiscus
we investigate religion, 
hypocrisy, politics, charity and culture. Purple Hibiscus 
explores the issues of ethnic tensions and political unrest 
in Nigeria as parallels for coming of age and issues of 
identity definition. The allegory between personal and 
national identity elevates this story from a typical 
narrative of adolescent angst into a thoughtful analysis 
of the formation of self. While it is easy to read this tale 
as essentially feminist and the novel demands a post– 
colonial interpretation due to its post–colonial setting, it 
is important not to ignore the aspect of bildungsroman 
and the presence of Jaja. The nature of identity–seeking 
requires a somewhat psychoanalytic approach. The 
children of Purple Hibiscus , Jaja and Kambili Achike, 

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School of Distance Education
English Literature in the 21
st
 century
46 
seek to carve out their own identities. The youth of 
Nigeria are tasked with rebuilding the nation, 
depopulated after a destructive war. Similarly, as 
Kambili and Jaja's family disintegrates, they must come 
into their own, a task metaphorically equal to the 
struggle of Nigeria to form its own identity in its post–
colonial society. Kambili and Jaja are allegories for 
burgeoning post–colonial Nigeria, which must also face 
an adolescent– like emergence into an identity separate 
from its colonial roots. The fact that both children are 
ethnically Igbo, a culture and ethnicity ripped apart by 
violence, indicates that the identity of Nigeria rests in 
how well its people can overcome the pain of their past. 
Kambili and Jaja are bombarded by opposing forces: 
indigenous and colonial, Pagan and Christian, Nigerian 
and English, familial loyalty and individual identity. 
They, like many groups effectively inhabit two worlds 
simultaneously, navigating between indigenous and 
dominant Western systems.
Identities are also formed upon hopes and goals 
for the future and continue to be shaped as these 
potential futures come—or do not come—to pass. Two 
potential futures of Nigeria are embodied in Father 
Amadi and Aunty Ifeoma. Both of these characters are 
surrogate authority figures whose influence expands the 
farther Kambili and Jaja get from Eugene. Father Amadi 
is a young pastor at the Catholic church in Nsukka, the 
university city where Kambili and Jaja visit extended 
family. More interested in people than power, he has 
successfully blended the colonizing culture with the 
indigenous one. The bulk of Nigerian Catholics reside in 
Igbo land, and Father Amadi is the ideal Nigerian 

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School of Distance Education
English Literature in the 21
st
 century
47 
Catholic. His songs of praise are sung both in English 
and Igbo, and he is far less bound to European Catholic 
tradition than Eugene. Although Kambili could sense 
that life with her father—symbolizing life in Nigeria 
under the current regime—was not the way life was 
supposed to be, devoid of both joy and spontaneity, she 
does not begin to understand this consciously until her 
stay in Nsukka, where Kambili meets Father Amadi. At 
first, Kambili is unable to socialize with Father Amadi; 
she has been raised in an environment that makes her 
place in the Church abundantly clear. But Father Amadi 
wishes to make Kambili a participant in her religion 
rather than a passive recipient. Through unceasing effort, 
Father Amadi is able to draw Kambili out of her shell. 
The way that Ifeoma raises her children is diametrically 
opposed to the way that Eugene raises his. Eugene raises 
his children on the principle of fear. They are able to 
achieve only what Eugene wants them to achieve, and 
then they only achieve because they are afraid of the 
consequences of failure. Kambili and Jaja do not nurse 
any ambitions of their own, but are simply being made 
into machines. Ifeoma, on the other hand, allows her 
children to nurse ambitions and to make mistakes, for 
she believes that this is the only way that the children 
will grow. Her parenting philosophy is about "setting 
higher and higher jumps for them in the way she talked 
to them, in what she expected of them. Aunty Ifeoma 
represents the possible future of Nigerian democracy. In 
this future, no child is bound by socioeconomic 
measures or questions of race or religion, at least in 
theory. Ifeoma's is the future within which each Nigerian 
citizen has a voice as well as the freedoms that the polity 
of Western society considers a birthright.

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School of Distance Education
English Literature in the 21
st
 century
48 
The purple hibiscus
is the personification of Jaja 
and is used as a symbol for freedom which Jaja won 
from his father. He got it from Nsukka “Nsukka started it 
all” and has brought it now in Enugu. Kambili wants him 
to spread it to Abba, as she speaks with her mother on 
their way to visit Jaja in prison. The hibiscus is a symbol 
of sought freedom.