Blossoming of Freedom: Use of Symbols in Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus

Dr. Chittaranjan Misra

Head, Department of English

B.J.B. Autonomous College, Bhubaneswar, (Odisha) India

Purple Hibiscus is the first novel of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie that was published in 2003.Set
against the political perspective of Nigeria of 1990s the novel explores the turmoil and
turbulence both at the private and the public levels. The first sentence starts with the words
“things started to fall apart” that echo the title of Chinua Achebe’s first novel Things Fall Apart.
Like Achebe she reveals in her novel the cultural transition of the Igbo society into modernity.
The novel is a narrative in first person. The narrator is Kambili Achika, a girl in her adolescence.
Though the lucidity of a fifteen year-old child’s narrative is never obstructed by authorial
interventions there is a symbolic pattern that structures the whole novel. The three parts entitled
“Breaking Gods”, “Speaking with our Spirits” and “The Pieces of Gods’ are symbolic captions
of the sequencing of“Palm Sunday”, “Before Palm Sunday” and “After Palm Sunday”. The key
symbol of the whole text is the purple hibiscus. Purple is a colour that can oscillate between red
and blue with the changing of brightness and seen from different angles .The meaning of the
novel too is blurred under overlapping shades of meaning. The matter of fact objects are
transformed as symbols just as the purple hibiscuses blooming in Iofema’s garden with other
flowers grips Kambili and her brother Jaja with a scent of freedom. The paper tries to explore
how the purple hibiscus blooms through most of the characters unfolding a major aspect of what
they do and stand for. In the light of the flower symbol the story of a child gets metamorphosed
into the revelation of the adult world. Other symbols too enrich the meanings of the novel.

In the first chapter the significance of the purple hibiscus is highlighted against the backdrop of
the experience of being silenced through the recounting of Kambili, the narrator. She, her brother
Jaja and their mother were controlled by the authoritarian father Eugene who had earned the
reputation of a great philanthropist in the eyes of the public. Kambili recalls:

“I lay in bed after Mama left and let my mind rake through the past, through the years when Jaja
and Mama and I spoke more with our spirits than with our lips. Until Nsukka. Nsukka started it
all; Aunty Ifeoma’s little garden next to the verandah of her flat in Nsukka began to lift the
silence. Jaja’s defiance seemed to me now like Aunty Ifeoma’s experimental purple hibiscus:
rare, fragrant with the undertones of freedom, a different kind of freedom from the one the
crowds waving green leaves chanted at Government Square after thecoup. A freedom to be, to
do.” (Chap 1)
The three characters were never allowed to speak in loud voice. The two children had to follow
the routine prepared by Papa (Eugene) and the slightest deviation led to severe punishment. As a
devout Catholic he never had any sense of guilt while torturing his wife and children through his
imposition of rules and rigid surveillance .For him his ways were religious. At home an autocrat
he was a famed champion of freedom in the public. The Standard, a newspaper he owned was
the only paper that resisted the autocratic and corrupt leader who through a military coup had
taken over the Nigerian Government. Eugene was praised by Father Benedict for being a
righteous publisher of the newspaper propagating truth and freedom even though the time was
difficult and dangerous. But as a husband he was responsible for several miscarriages his wife
suffered. Kambili, the narrator speaks about Papa’s beatings. She too was hospitalized being
inhumanely beaten by her Papa.

For people like Eugene truth is monolithic. His version of truth for him is the only reality. It is as
natural as the red hibiscus. The hibiscuses are red with which Beatrice; Eugene’s quiet and
submissive wife had to decorate the church. The red hibiscuses blooming near their house
attracted passersby and visitors who were tempted to pluck them. Though the novelist does not
offer a ‘floriography’ to encrypt symbolic meaning, her description of the red and purple
hibiscuses evoke the referents commonly associated with both the colours. The incidents of the
novel are sequenced through a colour transition from red to purple. Red symbolizes power and
authority. “In 18th-century Europe, red was usually associated with the monarchy and with those
in power. The Pope wore red, as did the Swiss Guards of the Kings of France, the soldiers of the
British Army and the Danish Army.” (Web) The authority that Eugene enjoys does not come
from his ancestral roots. It comes from his being a ‘colonial product’. He disconnects himself
from his father Papa Nnukwu and fiercely follows the catholic and white ways. Kambili says:
“He hardly spoke Igbo, and although Jaja and I spoke it with Mama at home, he did not like us to
speak it in public. We had to sound civilized in public, he told us; we had to speak English.
Papa’s sister, Aunty Ifeoma, said once that Papa was too much of a colonial product. She had
said this about Papa in a mild, forgiving way, as if it were not Papa’s fault…” (Chap 1).

Just as we understand ‘red’ as a cultural code, we share the connotation of purple as common
knowledge that the narrative assumes as a code. Purple too is a colour associated with power,
royalty, independence and creativity. But purple is not in binary oppositionality with red. The
similarity and difference embedded in the metaphorical entwining of the floral colours signify
change and possibilities. Jaja is drawn towards the purple hibiscuses in aunty Ifeoma’s garden.
Even though he was familiar to the sight of the red ones near his own house the difference of
their colour in Nsukka attracts him. The flowers were rare and fragrant but the beauty was a
product of experimental intervention through botanical research. The seventeen year old boy’s
defiance against his father blossoms like the purple flowers. The changes that come in his
perception leading to bold actions like challenging his father and rejecting his Catholic faith are
manifestation of the purpling of red in the direction of freedom.
The same process is activated in the feelings of Kambili at the new place when she comes in
contact with Father Amadi, a young, handsome Nigerian who is a Catholic priest but respects his
traditional roots. Her conversation with him brings her a new scent of freedom and for the first
time she realizes the fun of laughing, running and playing in addition to her sexual awakening.
The description of the way Kambili spent time in the stadium with Amadi is full of reference to
different colours. Before she started playing volley ball she “focused on the bleak, unpainted
spectator stands, abandoned for so long that tiny plants had started to push their green heads
through the cracks in the cement.”(176) .She saw the blue flash of Amadi’s tank top. She
narrates: “Father Amadi was like blue wind, elusive.”(176)Amadi could mark the reddish stain
on her hand which was a smudge of hastily wiped lipstick she had used for the first time. The
reference to the white and black football, the blue-and-gold Legion of Mary sticker on the
dashboard and Kambili’s joy which was like ‘the sweetness of an overripe bright yellow cashew
fruit’ (180) are like a spectrum generating multiple colours as signs. Adichie doesn’t offer paired
opposites privileging one term over the other. For her red and purple are not oppositional as
terms in a binary but are signifiers of possibilities for a flower like hibiscus. Red contains purple
and purple is a combination of red and blue. The same character Eugene who is a great
philanthropist is a monstrous fundamentalist at the same time. His wife who is an epitome of
subservience and tolerance is able to poison him. The children who silently take orders from
their father are able to change and free themselves from the prison of restriction. As
representation of meanings the colour imagery abounds in the novel.

Sandwiched between silence and violence both at the public and domestic levels the characters
come to the fore through the character-narrator Kambili. Purple Hibiscus is a “homodiegetic
narrative where the character who narrates is also involved in the events”. (Nayar
2013:67).Through the narrator’s observation Adichie sets the spirit of the events to take place:

“The purple plants had started to push out sleepy buds, but most of the flowers were still on the
red ones.”(9)The sleepy buds seem to bloom after the climactic moments narrated in the
beginning of the novel. Kambili describes the Palm Sunday when her father infuriated by Jaja’s
absenting from the communion threw his missal at the etagere breaking the ceramic figurines
.Beatrice used to polish the figurines of dancing ballets each time she was beaten by her husband.
“She spent at least a quarter of an hour on each balletdancing figurine. The last time, only two
weeks ago, when her swollen eye was still the black-purple color of an overripe avocado, she had
rearranged them after she polished them” (Chap 1). When Kambili asks her whether the broken
figurines would be replaced she answers in the negative: “Maybe Mama had realized that she
would not need the figurines anymore; that when Papa threw the missal at Jaja, it was not just the
figurines that came tumbling down, it was everything. I was only now realizing it, only just
letting myself think it” (Chap1).The tumbling down of the figurines was the decisive moment
followed by significant changes:

“The ‘everything’ mentioned above is about to do ‘something’ that is deemed to be ‘too new,
too foreign’ in family life—to poison Papa and thus get rid of him. Things are going to change.
There is no need to replace the figurines but to make sure that no missal will ever be thrown at
anything or anybody else.” (Kaboré 2013:35). The figurines can be seen as a metaphorical
extension of Beatrice. Her petrified self begins to be animated and Beatrice takes a final decision
to end her miseries.

Palm Sunday refers to the Sunday before Easter which celebrates Christ’s entry into Jerusalem.
Palm is symbolic of the religious rites and victory. In the novel palm has a symbolic significance.
Beatrice used to knot the palm fronds wet with holy water into sagging cross shapes and hang
them on the wall to be carried to the church. “They would stay there until next Ash Wednesday,
when we would take the fronds to church, to have them burn for ash. Papa, wearing a long, gray
robe like the rest of the oblates, helped distribute ash every year”. [1, p3].André Kaboré analyses
the symbolic association of palm fronds and ashes in a logical manner: “Mama holding the palms
and Papa the ashes foreshadows the end of the narrative where Papa becomes ashes by being
poisoned by Mama who thus gains victory over him, victory hinted at by her handling of the
palm fronds”. (Kaboré 32)Palm trees and palm wine are an integral component of Eugene’s
father PapaNnukwu’s village.

Other symbols can be explored at the level of semiotics of body language. Jaja and Kambili
communicate with a “language of the eyes” in the presence of their father. They speak more with
spirit than with their lips. Kambili’s pressing her lips together and biting her lower lip so that she
would not join in the singing of the Igbo song are gestures symbolic of subjugated states of
individuals robbed of their right to speak. The ‘love sip’ from the cup of tea raised to the lips
resulting in burning of Kambili’s tongue is like burning Papa’s love into her. She says: “But it
didn’t matter, because I knew that when the tea burned my tongue, it burned Papa’s love into
me.”(8)This is a symbolic assault against the speaking organ. The end of the novel is full of
hope. Again the purple hibiscus is referred to: “Jaja will plant purple hibiscus, too, and I’ll plant
ixora so we can suck the juices of the flowers”. (307) Examined closely the symbols emerge as
the core components of Adichie’s narrative art.

Works Cited:

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozie. Purple Hibiscus. New York: Harper Perennial, 2017.

Kaboré , André . ‘The Symbolic Use of Palm, Figurines and Hibiscus in Adichie’s Purple
Hibiscus’. Linguistics and Literature Studies 1(1) 2013: 32-36.

Nayar, Pramod K. Studying Literature: An Introduction to Fiction and Poetry. Orient Black
Swan. 2013, 67.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red

http://www.hrpub.org