Purple Hibiscus

“Things started to fall apart at home.”

Adichie’s first line of the novel serves as an intentional allusion and tribute to fellow Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart, portending a domestic situation that unravels at best and completely disintegrates at worst. Beginning the action in medias res indicates “things” have been different until this point and after this will continue to worsen. With Papa’s strong grip on his family slowly loosing, things indeed do fall apart, for better or worse. 

“A love sip, he called it, because you shared the little things you loved with the people you loved […] The tea was always too hot, always burned my tongue.” 

Papa is usually quite stern with his children, so when he poignantly shares sips of tea with Kambili, she lovingly accepts his gift, despite its scalding heat. The heat indicates that even the “love” he gives his family is too harsh, implying that he cannot reciprocate unconditional love.

“Jaja’s defiance seems like 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 the coup. A freedom to be, to do.” 

Jaja craves the rare freedom to be the man he wants to be and is thus compared to the equally rare purple hibiscus. He also identifies with the complex nature of the flower in its blend of two colors, red and blue, to create a new hue. The combination of two pure, or primary colors, also implies that mixing past ways with new ways will create a new and different future—ideals Jaja will embrace.