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Elliot Ziwira Senior Writer
In “Purple Hibiscus”, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie unknots the complex analogies between religion and politics, which depict individual idiosyncrasies as they interact and entwine with the national discourse.
In an entertaining, revealing and compelling way, the book questions the nature of love, oppression, imprisonment and toil through religion and politics.
Adichie, like Mongo Beti in “Mission to Kala” (1957), examines how religion oppressively impacts on the individual psyche, and highlights the need for compromise and tolerance for the sake of coexistence.
Without satirising it as Beti does, she explores hypocritical tendencies prevalent in religious circles.
Since the fundamental ingredient in religion is belief, comparisons and differences should not be allowed to exist.
It is in its nature for religion not to consider or question the truthfulness of beliefs. To the religious, the existence of a supernatural being is beyond question.
It is simply a matter of faith. Therefore, the existence of the paranormal, a manifestation of cultural beliefs, makes it folly to consider a specific religion to be superior or holistic.
Inasmuch as there are different cultures, there will always be different religious beliefs. However, religious fanaticism somehow blocks reason and creates enemies out of would-be friends.
Usually, fanatically religious people entrench power around themselves, close their eyes and ears to reason and discernment, and ruthlessly come hard on their enemies, real or imagined. In the end, they become deities or even God’s equals on earth.
At the extreme end, a thin line exists between religion and politics in that both create platforms for intolerance and deceit, thus burdening the individual consciousness.
Like politics, religion has a way of informing submissiveness and naivety in the way it dictates what is custom. It is hair-splitting to separate the egos emanating from religious fanaticism and political intolerance if individuals are reduced to flies that can simply be swatted.
Pertaining to faith and belief, there are always more questions than answers. It is this that has prompted the philosopher Heraclitus (540- 475BC) to insist that harmony and disharmony are inseparable, since the quintessence of harmony resides in strife and tension.
These and many more feelings will ring in the reader’s mind as he/she engrosses himself/herself in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “Purple Hibiscus”.
The book unfolds the story of Eugene, a learned philanthropic businessman and publisher, told through his 15-year-old daughter, Kambili. A Christian-Catholic, Eugene is intolerant of failure and “heathens”, and hardly speaks Igbo, his mother tongue.
Kambili, the first person narrator, informs us: “We had to sound civilised in public. . . We had to speak English.”
However, Eugene’s sister, Aunty Ifeoma, a university lecturer, thinks Eugene “was too much of a colonial product,” because he was raised by Catholic missionaries.
Adichie scrutinises how Christianity creates individuals who shun their own traditional beliefs, and at the same time oppress those close to them. They do so by drawing analogies between Christianity and African Religion.
Eugene is at loggerheads with his father Papa-Nnukwu, whom he calls a heathen because of his beliefs. Despite his generosity and philanthropic work for the less privileged, he does not care about his father’s welfare, neither does he visit him nor allow him into his two abodes; the rural and urban.
Papa-Nnukwu’s crime is his refusal to convert to Christianity.
Eugene only allows his children 15-minute visits to their grandfather’s compound, even though it is only five minutes away from their Abba home. He gives them strict instructions that they should not touch or eat anything.
Because of his hard-handedness, he is reprimanded by his sister “to stop doing God’s job.”
She reminds him, “God is big enough to do his own job. If God will judge our father for choosing to follow the way of our ancestors, then let God do the judging.”
Neither a priest nor pastor, Eugene finds fault with everyone, including those priests that he considers too loud, enthusiastic or liberal; and equates them to “the mushroom Pentecostal” denominations, which he always slams.
To him, Christianity is not about rejoicing or exposing exuberant enthusiasm; it is a serious thing, calling for seriousness at all times. Laughter does not ring in his house, and his children, Jaja and Kambili as well as his wife Beatrice are always subdued. They cannot even speak in raised voices or smile, and are not even allowed to watch TV or listen to music, with their lives reduced to schedules.
Failure to adhere to strict Catholic regulations or becoming second in anything, school included, is punishable. Seemingly larger than life, Eugene’s voice is authority.
Using the first person narrative voice, especially that of an innocent child, who believes that laughing, smiling or looking at one’s reflection in the mirror is sin, Adichie allows the reader to make his/her own interpretations on the fictional experience as the authorial voice is kept to the background.
Kambili chronicles how her mother suffers two miscarriages as a result of the many brutal attacks she endures at the hands of her unforgiving husband. She narrates how she was once punished for coming second in class, and for eating 10 minutes before Mass.
She narrates how, in a fit of rage, Eugene scalded their legs for not disclosing that they shared the same room with their grandfather, a “heathen” when they visited their aunt in a first ever visit of their lives.
Poignantly, Kambili informs the reader of how she regained consciousness in hospital, and has to write her examinations on a hospital bed following an attack from her father for trying to protect the pieces of their grandfather’s painting he shredded. Also, she captures the incident in which 17-year-old Jaja has his finger incapacitated.
Though she has been made to believe that heathens are different from Christians, Kambili is taken aback by her grandfather’s prayer.
“Chineke I have killed no one, I have taken no one’s land, I have not committed adultery. . . Chineke! Bless my son, Eugene. Let the sun not set on his prosperity,” Papa-Nnukwu prays to the God of his ancestors.
After scalding her feet, Kambili is told by her father: “That is what you do to yourself when you walk into sin. You burn your feet.”
When his father dies, Eugene does not mourn, neither does he attend the funeral. His gripe is that his sister refuses to have him buried like a Catholic because he was not one. Begrudgingly, he offers money to buy seven head of cattle for Papa-Nnukwu’s funeral, complaining that “pagan funerals are expensive”.
Ironically, Eugene purports to be fighting against political tyranny through his newspaper, The Standard, yet he oppresses his family; psychologically, physically and emotionally.
His editor says of his children: “Imagine what The Standard would be if we were all quiet.”
As he causes suffering through silence and subjugation to those harbouring diverse views, Eugene cannot be a champion of democracy, as his dictatorial nature shows itself above his hypocritical philanthropy. The military government, which he lambasts through his editor, Ade Coker, who sadly dies at the brutal hand of the Head of State, is no worse than him.
Raised on silence, Kambili only finds her voice, laughter and smile through the outgoing, energetic and outspoken young priest, Father Amadi, a regular visitor at her aunt’s place. Because she has never been exposed to love and intimacy, her heart falls for him, but he does not encourage her, which pains her.
Also, Jaja develops through exposure at Nsukka.
Eugene’s portrayal in Adichie’s “Purple Hibiscus”, therefore, resonates with the rationale that spirituality, as posited by philosophers Homer and Hesiod, Heraclitus’ predecessors, causes “all things that are shameful and a reproach among mankind: theft, adultery and mutual deception” (Fragment 11, Freeman).
Xenophanes (600BC), observes that although men have created gods in their own images, there really is “one God . . . neither in form like unto mortals nor in thought. . . He sees all over, thinks all over, and hears all over. . . Without toil he swayeth all things by the thought of his mind,” (Fragment 25, Burnet).
Suffice to say, man is both a product and creator of his own beliefs. It is only through his faith that he shapes his world, which in turn is moulded by an omniscient and omnipresent power — God.
Hence, religious wars emanating from a twisted belief that one religion should be considered superior to others must be stopped through compromise and tolerance.
Online Reporter