Title:   RETHINKING THE DYNAMICS OF VIOLENCE AS AN INTERNAL NECESSITY: A DECONSTRUCTIONIST READING OF CHIMAMANDA ADICHIE’S PURPLE HIBISCUS

Abstract
The bulk of critical works that Purple Hibiscus has drawn so far comprise unavoidable attempts to
explain away, endorse or simply discard the novel as a feminist propagandist tool, attempts often
validated using the author’s personal ideals or interests which she has championed at one time or
another and extreme projections of who she is or how she supposedly writes. This kind of criticism
has been perpetuated by mirroring its main female characters Kambili and Beatrice in the light of
sufferers and Eugene as a violator. This paper examines the creative appropriation and
transformation of an otherwise brute force (violence) as a necessary legitimizing tool of order and
a form which effectively weaves and sustains the plot of Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus, the absence of
which causes everything to collapse into chaos. Through criticism, Adichie’s works have had to
suffer the kind of academic injury that has often been inflicted on Wole Soyinka’s works namely
Reductionism. The view taken in this paper is that a work of art has integrity and demands
attention as a complete object with focused awareness which should reflect inwardly on the work.
Thus, through Paul Ricoeur’s close reading, a deconstructionist interpretation of Purple Hibiscus is
attempted and close attention paid to violence as an internal necessity which keeps the plot alive
with the aid of its male character Eugene Achike (Papa)-upon whose death the novel collapses
completely. It is argued that the movements or unravelling events in Purple Hibiscus derive from
this presence and ordering which also accounts for its complete coherence.
Keywords: violence, dynamics, deconstruction, close reading, internal necessity, form, order,
appropriation.

Citations:

Publication Date: 2021-07-09