Purple Hibiscus Pt. 1

Purple Hibiscus

This book is in the point of view by fifteen-year-old Kambili who lives in Enugu, Nigeria.  She lives with her mother, father, and brother.  Though this is not the most functional family, the father sets high expectations for everyone in the household.  One day her Aunt Ifeoma convinces her brother to have Kambili and her brother, Jaja, visit her.  They find a totally different world when they are with her and soon as they return home things are different after her mother commits a desperate act.

Archetype 1: The Fall

In the beginning of the book you get an idea of Kambili's parents relationship, which is abusive.  The mother being metaphorically in the father's cuffs, being a "housewife" with certain expectations.  You also learn that she has had many miscarriages and townspeople have told her husband to marry a fertile woman and leave her.  She discovers that she is pregnant and tells Kambili who is worried for the child because of her father.  After a couple of months being pregnant Kambili hears rumbling in her parents bedroom and emerges from her room to see her father carrying her mother downstairs and blood on the floor.  She is hospitalized, but loses the child and never mentions it again, acting as if it never happened.

Archetype 2: Father - Son Conflict

The book opens up with the family coming home from church and Kambili being nervous because Jaja didn't take communion in church, which is an expectation from their father.  After arriving home his father questions Jaja, but Jaja’s answer does not satisfy him.”He picked up the missal and flung it across the room, toward Jaja.”(pg 7).  And then later that night Jaja excuses himself from dinner and goes to his room.  Their father excuses them and that’s when they leave, but Jaja didn’t even finish his meal and he left.  You can clearly tell there is tension in the household and that’s why Jaja is slightly rebelling.