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Family And Society
[A CASE STUDY OF THINGS FALL APART AND PURPLE HIBISCUS IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE]
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The depiction of women’s participation in politics and their
representation in the public sphere are undoubtedly of great
significance since gender equality is the natural foundation for any
democratic society and both have an enormous impact on the private
sphere as well. Regarding women, Adichie depicts primarily female
characters that are, despite the negative portrayals of suppressed and
submissive women in Western literature, educated, strong, emancipated
and fighting for their rights whenever necessary. Thanks to writers like
Chinua Achebe, Adichie’s inspiration, who is considered the father of
Nigerian literature, she has discovered the power of telling stories
about characters she can identify with – real Nigerians. Adichie is a
literary descendant of Achebe’s storytelling tradition, but, unlike him,
she pays great attention to women and gives them a chance to narrate
from their own female perspectives. Adichie’s work represents an amalgam
of tradition and modernity, which stands as a parallel to Igbo
traditional values and colonial and postindependence modernity. The
author observes how traditional and modern ways of living and thinking
influence contemporary Nigerien women (Oyewumi, Oyeronke, 2013).
Both,
Achebe’s Nwoye and Adichie’sJaja ultimately forsake their childhood and
family identity by rebelling against their patriarchal and tyrannical
fathers. Though, these two young men act in rebellion out of divergent
motivations, and convey somewhat different results, the situations still
strike similar in their theme and placement within the structure of
each respective text. Furthermore, Nwoye and Jaja illustrate the
negative repercussions of oppressive rule on individual development,
family ties, and progressive futures. The conventions of masculinity in
the form of fathers ultimately lead to social disintegration as the
sons’ rebellion marks when things fall apart (Otagburuagu, 2014: 256).
Both
Okonkwo in Things Fall Apart, and Eugene in Purple Hibiscus, represent a
very rigid sense of masculinity in which traces of flexibility and
weakness are not only frowned upon, but completely unaccepted. The two
overbearing fathers eventually motivate Nwoye and Jaja to disregard
their authority radically and, in a sense, turn away from their families
and their roots in order for introspection and self-development. The
unsettling feelings and questioning Nwoye experienced as an adolescent
later manifest into complete rebellion after the exposure of British
missionaries. White missionaries had come to multiple Ibo villages,
proclaiming the Gospel and God’s love and faith for his followers while
attempting to debunk conventional Ibo superstition and pagan belief.
Already wary of Ibo ways, Nwoye was captivated by the “poetry of the new
religion†and the relief “poured into his parched soul†(Achebe 104).
After
enduring a child-hood of unjustified domestic abuse and strict
authoritative structures, Nwoye “was happy to leave his father†and join
other Christians at the missionary school in Umuofia (Achebe 108).
Without even bare understanding of Christian theology, and even the
basics of salvation, Nwoye reversed every foundation of his life
including traditional Ibo religion, his father’s authority, and
socialized masculinity, to look for answers elsewhere in this new
cultural religion. Nwoye’s conversion denoted a clear realization that
things were falling apart as the domestic sphere of tradition and
normality was split wide open leaving room for education, conversion,
and a different kind of oppression.
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