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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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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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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.
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