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Purple Hibiscus Essay

985 Words4 Pages

Is Religion portrayed as an evil and enslaving tool that hurts and breaks relationships?

Purple Hibiscus is a novel written by renowned Nigerian author,”Ngozi Adichie.” The novel takes place in Nigeria and there are two distinct families of the same bloodline who have radically different traditions and ways of life. A number of crucial themes sprung up from these two families such as dictatorship, faith, love and much more. The majority of themes that are present in the book reflect and allude to the postcolonial state of Nigeria. The postcolonial state of Nigeria was very militarial and authoritarian. It had a gap between the Christians, who had good contact with the former British colonizers and the Pagans. In the following Essay, we will …show more content…

This is evident by the character of Eugene in relation to his pagan father’s death in which he takes a very uncaring mood and wishes not to take part in his funeral because he is a pagan. Eugene says, ’’I cannot participate in a pagan funeral, but we can discuss with the parish priest and arrange a catholic funeral’’ To add some context to the quote, it is a response to Aunty Ifeoma. Aunty Ifeoma is recorded to say,’’Is that all you can say,eh,Eugene?Have you nothing else to say,gbo?Our father has died!Has your head turned upside down? Will you not help me bury our father?’’ As we can see.Aunty Ifeoma’s questions are very concrete and strong in nature. Her use of both English and Igbo words show that she was in a state of great grief and emotion. Adichie furthermore conveys her high emotion by bringing in questions after questions and introducing exclamation marks. She gives Papa Eugene the perfect response as it is very weak to a range of strong and straightforward questions. It emphasizes his relation towards his father, which obviously is filled with contempt. This clearly details religion as a driver of wars and a gadget used to hate. It makes people rebuff their own bloodline relatives due to differences in

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