Purple Hibiscus is a novel made by
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie about
a very religious Nigerian father
who controls his families' lives. In
Nigeria, a woman is not allowed to
speak unless spoken too. Most
people in Nigeria take their
religious beliefs too far and begin
to do really bad things, like
Eugene. The silence about the
family leads other family members
into not knowing what is going on
until they actually begin to
observe and find out.
Women are most of the time not
able to express their feelings and
leave other family members or
other people to speak for them. In
the novel, Purple Hibiscus, Kambili
shows how her silence leads her
to not being able to express her
feelings and makes her leave
other people to speak for her.
In the beginning, Kambili does not
speak at all, but only speaks when
spoken to. She begins to describe
the silence between the family on
certain occasions. "We all reached
for the salt at the same time. Jaja
and I touched the crystal shaker,
my finger brushed him gently,
then he let go. I passed it to Papa.
The silence stretched the room."
As Papa asks for the salt, Jaja and
Kambili reach out for the salt.
Silence is still expressed
throughout the room. Kambili is
able to hand the salt to Papa as
the silence still stretches
throughout the room
Kambili and Jaja share a very strange relationship that is
non-verbal and both could tell what the other needed,
wanted and thought without uttering a single word. Rarely
ever leaving home together or even mentioning Papa’s
name out loud. Kambili’s silence then becomes more
conspicuous during her stay with Aunty Ifeoma’s family she
says “I did not say anything else until lunch was over, but
listened to every word spoke, 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”, and in this scene we find Kambili observing
the power of dynamics through the way aunt Ifeoma’s
family continuously have conversations and Kambili
contrasts this to the way her family acts back at her home
where they are forced to keep quite by their father Eugene
and the “laughter and banter” suggests that the aunt
Ifeoma’s family enjoys each other’s company. This clearly
shows that through the oppression forced on Kambili by her
father her “Silence “becomes a weapon through which she
observes closely how the people around her are like
compared to how her father describes the world to her.
On a political level we find Papa and Ade Coker write the
newspaper “The Standard” that represents the
freedom of Speech and speaks against the corrupt
government. Aunty Ifeoma too criticises the corruption
she sees unlike the other professors at her university. The
Act of Silence is initiated on them when Ade Coker is
silenced by a package bomb and Aunty Ifeoma loses her
job. These actions are likened to the way Papa treats his
own family using violence and oppression it contrasts the
way he likes to speak about oppression though his own
family members are victims of it
At the end of the novel, Amaka says to Kambili, "Why do you lower your
voice?" Amaka describes it by also saying, "You lower your voice when
you speak. You talk in whispers. This gives us an understanding of how Kambili
talks to people. She doesn't talk very loud, basically a whisper, Eugene did tell Ade
Coker that he did not raise his children to be loud and obnoxious, but this is also
because she barely talks at home. Kambili only speaks when her mom, dad, and
Jaja speak to her. Amaka begins to realise how Kambili is talking and tries to figure
out why she speaks that way. Kambili was sitting at a table and she stated, "I had
felt as if I was not there, that I was just observing the table". This shows her
silence even at a dinner table. Eugene has influenced her so badly to the point that
she doesn't even
tend to have conversations at a table, Kambili begins to feel a little left out because
of her not speaking.
Ultimately the theme of silence is
meant to show the suffering and
oppression forced on both the
Achike family and Nigeria as a
whole. The silence shown in the
novel is meant to be the starting
point of the development of the
characters as they encounter other
aspects
and points of views of other
people which helps them grow a
conscious state and become more
aware of their environment.