“That night, I dreamed that I was laughing, but it did not sound like my laughter, although I was not sure what my laughter sounded like. It was cackling and throaty and enthusiastic, like Aunty Ifeoma’s” (Ngozi 299).
The above excerpt was echoed by Kambili as she was heading to her aunt’s home to visit the family that was staying there. Where their father sent her together with her brother Jali, to live with their Aunt Ifeoma’s who is a professor and is living with her children who are happy and are left to do whatever they feel like.
This is unlike what Kambili is used to at her home where her stringent, rich and staunch Christian father believes in the rule of the fist. Her father rules their home with an iron fist and her together with her brother is not allowed to do whatever they like. They grow in a tyranny home which is as much of a dictatorship just like what Nigerian as a country is facing.
The passage shows how much Kambili has grown in personality and how free and bold she is becoming. Her Aunt is of a free mind and is liberal as opposed to her father. The passage therefore shows how much living under her Aunts roof (house) has changed her personality.
While at her Aunt’s house, Kambili fell in love with a liberal preacher a move which is seen as a sign of shedding naivety. Kambili has grown to being admirable and is viewing herself with much more respect and able to stand for what she believes in. she is empowered by the staying with her Aunt and her children.
Feeling free and able to make mistakes she is headed back to her father’s house. Then, she is more able to make mistakes and learn from them as opposed to the life their father had put her with her brother where they were to grow as perfect kids. In this passage, Adichie is trying to bring about the themes of oppression, defiance and change.
The defiance is learnt in Nsukka a place associated with hte purple Hibiscus. Hte whole book is about freedom and oppression. It features the transformation from these two themes which are exhibited by Kambili.
The book ends with Kambili returning to Nsukka to visit the new family of Ifeoma’s flat while she laughs her way to the place which she says is“Because Nsukka could free something deep inside your belly that would rise up to your throat and come out as a freedom song. As laughter” (Ngozi 299).
The ending of the novel comes with the enlightenment of Kambili, the confidence and defiance cultivated as she was living in her aunt’s house in Nsukka. It ends as she is travelling back to visit the family that is staying in her aunt’s house who had moved to America after she lost her job for defying the University, defiance which is emulated by Kambili in her characters as she returned home.
She is travelling back to see experience the feeling of freedom and the place where the cycle is broken, where they moved from being voiceless to being able to air their views on concerns that affected them.
Ngozi’s message in this novel is that of enlightenment: that as human beings we need to be able to air our views on matters touching on our personality and we need to allow others the space to do so too. Living an oppressed life cripples our abilities and we end up achieving less, but when we are left to be free, we discover ourselves and live a better life.
Works Cited
Ngozi, Chimamands. Purple Hibiscus. Lagos: Harper Collins Publishers, 2010.