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Purple Hibiscus Analysis

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Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a very dense novel that focuses on the development of the main character and the supporting characters which could be defined as Bildungsroman. The narrator, Kambili, takes a reader through the psychology of the characters and explores them in different ways. At the beginning, we are exposed to the family that has a patriarchal figure as a father and a husband who is the perpetrator of domestic violence. Yet he is a role model and a remarkable figure to the public. The novel penetrates deep through various forms of violence which are coercive, discursive and domestic and are the ones that separate families, communities and the Nigerian nation as a whole. This novel is centred in these aspects of violence in which the narrator tries to outline them in different stages of life in the postcolonial society. In this essay I will discuss the connection between these forms of violence and link them to the characters and their encounters in the novel. Coercive violence. In this living time Nigeria is in a state of extreme violence and the illegal taking over of the “Big Men”. The second chapter of the novel, there is an indication of violence when “A general with a strong Hausa accent came on and announced that there had been a coup and that [they had] a new government” (Adichie, 2004, p.24). In this phrase we get an idea of what is currently happening in Nigeria and how it is politically driven. The military uses its power to
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