Resumo de Purple Hibiscus - CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE

THE PERSPECTIVE OF CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE?S PURPLE HIBISCUSAs a background, Purple HIBISCUS won the best first book, the African region and overall, awards in the 2005 British Commonwealth Literature Prize Competition. The book has gained recommendations in higher institutions of learning since the time. It has equally gained no little popularity among casual readers including in the author?s home country, Nigeria.Chimamanda Adichie tells the story through an active first person narrator, unlike a fringe first person narrative technique in works like Joseph Conrad?s Heart of Darkness and Scott. Fitzgerald?s Great Gatsby. Kambili Achike tells the story, Purple Hibiscus, in flashback, and from her experience of it as a younger teenager until the actual time she tells it. Kambili?s point of attack ? the narrative time where the novel begins ? is mid-way. She starts where the Achike family ? headed by the father, Eugene Achike ? begins suffering a quite fatal family disintegration. She then moves back in time to show the reader all that precedes and precipitates the crash. After the later flashback, Kambili continues again from where she starts the narration, that is, at the point that things begins to fall apart in the Achike family, and she ends the story in the present time. It is thus observed that while the first three parts of the novel is written in the past tense, the last part, which focuses on the present time, is written in the simple present tense. Kambili grows in the narration from about fourteen to around eighteen years old. The reader understands that Kambili is a secondary school student, cozily brought up, all through the narrative time. (A secondary school in Nigeria is an equivalent of a high school in the U.S. or United Kingdom). Moreover, the personality of Kambili Achike,shy, submissive and reticent, guides her narration of Purple Hibiscus from start to finish. However, Kambili still betrays her shyness, her undisclosed stand over varying issues and questions raised in the narration, by her choice of the particular scenes and narrative structure. She must have had broader experience within the five years of the story?s development. Nonetheless, Chimamanda Adichie?s adept exploitation of the teenage mind throughout the narration is enchanting. The choice of the teenage, inexperienced, narrator ? as the story proves ? does not only establish the author?s conscious intelligence, it also convinces the critical mind of both her imaginative prowess and the tenderest sensitivity. Perhaps, Adichie partly recollects her childhood perceptions. Childlike, Kambili is able to carelessly approach questions of social, religious and political concerns in the Eastern Nigerian environment ? a country that graduates from an obnoxiously corrupt civilian administration to the rule by a monstrous military tyrant ? innocently, with personal sincerity. She also closely approximates an objective thematic presentation having being provided her timid, reticent personality.Her timidity makes her a meticulous observer, in addition. As Kambili virtually makes no comment on the issues raised ? issues like corruption in government and public offices, political oppression and subjugation, poverty and extreme economic disparity, national brain drain, love and celibacy, religious fanaticism and religious tolerance, and family relationship ? she gives her reader room to interpret the situations for himself or herself or allows the reader understand from the judgments passed by the other characters that include Jaja, Beatrice Achike, Obiora, Amaka, even youngest Chima, Aunty Ifeoma, father Amadi as well as Papa-Nnukwu. However, the reader could yet smell Kambili?s sympathies. Kambili says that her mother was slung over his father's shoulder like the jute sacks of rice(page 33) and that her father was like a Fulani nomad?as he inflicts belt on her, her mother and Jaja(page 102) among other instances.These statements are very suggestive oambili?s stand: she really ecognizes her father?s, Eugene, religious fanaticism and actually appears a feminist. Ultimately, the reader has only seen the story from Kambili?s viewpoint. The story would be different if it were to be rendered by her father, the Catholic fanatic, Eugene Achike. We would see that Kambili, perhaps, lacks the spiritual understanding that her father possesses. To Kambili, nothing is wrong or Godless with Papa-Nnukwu?s traditional religion, but Eugene asserts it is pagan. Jaja, Kambili?s older brother, also lacks Eugene?s spiritual perception. He simply considers the communion bread as an ordinary wafer that gives him bad breath. Eugene, however, believes it is the host. Notwithstanding, it is unfair to humanity to impose a faith on another individual: this is truly fanaticism. Eugene should not have shattered Papa-Nnukwu?s portrait that Kambili really cherishes. He could rather ensure that his daughter keeps it away from his house. The point is that if we read Purple Hibiscus from Eugene Achike?s perspective, we shall not only see Eugene?s weakness but also his strength as well as Kambili and her compatriots? spiritual weakness. It should be realized that Kambili emphasizes that her father, Eugene, is really loving, so much that after the latter?s tragic death Kambili still longs for his tender embrace. Eugene Achike?s fanaticism is not merely a colonial illness. His inflexible traditional father never sponsored his western education. Eugene is unforgiving and vengeful.Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is able to tell a very moving story with a sensitive technical intelligence. Purple Hibiscus is thematically endearing and thought-provoking, giving quite old issues a fresh outlook; technically, the story is not unappreciable. TO GET A COMPLETE ANALYSIS OF PURPLE HIBISCUS, DO VISIT http://africanwriters.friendpages.com/

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