Purple Hibiscus

Papa, proud community leader and patriarch, holds high positions in Enugu, Nigeria. His importance is ubiquitous at St. Agnes Catholic Church, as well as at the factories and newspaper that he owns. He uses his status, power, and money to reinforce his strict moral principles and beliefs both in the community and at home. Papa is known to publish truth in his newspapers and is terrorized for criticizing the new government he welcomes. The country’s unrest is paralleled with Papa’s—one is public, the other private. Papa embodies the authoritative patriarch who publicly practices good deeds and exhibits many seemingly generous acts toward the community, though one wonders whether he is genuine or merely hiding his subconscious guilt. He is a conflicted soul and complex study of human nature.

As Mama’s husband and Jaja and Kambili’s father, Papa controls every aspect of their lives based on the dogmatic white “colonial” Catholicism he adopted as a young man. Because of his belief in this system, Papa violently abuses his family for any slight infraction against it, showing only a conditional love that alienates them from him. Especially unfortunate is how Papa shuns his own father and disregards their blood connection completely, replacing it with isolationism and condemnation.