Analysis Of Purple Hibiscus

840 Words4 Pages
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s coming-of-age novel Purple Hibiscus narrates the story of Kambili, a girl in Nigeria, who deals with religious hypocrisy and abuse of her father, a product of the British colonization. She and her brother, Jaja, visit their aunt and receive a different perspective on their family’s lives. This novel takes place in the Igbo region of Nigeria, after the Nigerian Civil War that ended in 1970 and colonialism of the 1900’s. In Purple Hibiscus, Adichie conveys her views of the Nigerian Civil War to the reader by using the setting, specific events reciprocated in history, and contrasting characters within the novel. Purple Hibiscus is set in post-colonial Nigeria- where incidentally Adichie grew up- in a time of government, economic, and social struggle, after the Nigerian Civil War, also known as the Nigerian-Biafran War. “Military men would always overthrow one another, because they could, because they were all power drunk” (24) illustrates the internal governmental struggle in Nigeria during this book and a result of the “bloody coups of the sixties” (24). Nigeria is industrialized due to colonization of the British (Hurst) and is shown to be true as Papa owns a factory and newspaper branch known as “the Standard” (24). The industrialization of Nigeria is a direct effect from the colonization of Africa during the majority of the twentieth century. The colonization and the independence of Nigeria from Britain in 1960 led to an “ethnic tension in