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Purple Hibiscus Aunty Ifeoma Character Analysis

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Non nobis solum nati sumus. (Not for ourselves alone are we born.) Even Though these words were spoken by a Roman politician called Marcus Tulio Cicero thousands of years ago. It can perfectly apply to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus. This story is happening in Nigeria during the 90's. It is currently a very oppressive government. The main character is Kambili a very smart and quiet girl. She lives a very depressing, lonely life with an abusive father and a broken family. She then moves in with her Aunt for some time, there her life changes and she learns a lot. Throughout the help of Aunty Ifeoma, Father Amadi and Amaka, Kambili was able to grow as a character in positive as well as negative ways. Aunty Ifeoma was a very important …show more content…

He helped her grow out of her shell and to change from a quiet closed girl to a more open and talking girl. Kambili is already at Nsukka with Aunty Ifeoma, and her relationship with Father Amadi is growing closer and closer with time. At this point in time Father Amadi decides to take the kids to the stadium where this happens: "I wanted to smile, but I could not. My lips and cheeks were frozen," -------- "Then I felt the smile start to creep over my face, stretching my lips and cheeks, an embarrassed and amused smile." (177) Kambili states that she has never smiled before, which is understandable, considering the life she lived up until now. But here in this incident she smiled, for the first time. And the big contributor to that was exactly him, Father Amadi. And that was one of his main roles in this story was to break Kambili out of her shell, make her grow as a normal person and adapting to the real world. In this particular quote he influences her to do something that she has never done before. Smiling is something normal for us but for Kambili it was something new, and she wouldn't have smiled if it wasn't for Father Amadi. Another instance in where Adichie shows how Father Amadi helped Kambili gain confidence was towards the end of the story. When Kambili was going into Father Amadi's car and this example happened: "that eased the dryness in my throat as we got into his car, and I said, "I love you." (276). In this example Kambili finally comes out and says something shocking, I love you. That was one of the crucial points in the story in where it clearly shows the influence of Father Amadi in Kambili's personality shift. Kambili went from a quiet girl that had no confidence in herself, low self-esteem and no experience in the real world, to being able to say I love you to the guy she liked. Before going to Nsukka, Kambili's life was completely focused on her religion and studies. She

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