What methods do Mama and Kambili employ to cope with the abuse in their household?

Several characters are gripped with silence throughout the novel. Kambili suffers the most, unable to speak more than rehearsed platitudes without stuttering or coughing. Her silence is a product of the abuse that she endures at the hands of her father. Kambili does not allow herself to tell the truth about her situation at home. When her classmates taunt her for being a backyard snob, she does not explain that she does not socialize out of fear. She is not allowed to dally after school lest she be late and beaten.

When Mama miscarries, Papa makes the children say special novenas for their mother’s forgiveness. Even though he is to blame, he insinuates it is Mama’s fault. Mama believes that she cannot exist outside of her marriage. She dismisses Aunty Ifeoma’s ideas that life begins after marriage as “university talk.” Mama has not been liberated and withstands the abuse because she believes it is just. Ultimately, she poisons Papa because she can see no other way out. The abuse has repressed her to the point that she must resort to murder to escape.

The forces of tyranny, oppression, and silence all use violence as their tool throughout Purple Hibiscus. As with many of Adichie’s themes, the cycle of violence starts at the top and works its way down. The first violence was the oppression of British colonialism, which then led to corruption and violence in the Nigerian governments set up in its wake. The Head of State’s military regime uses violence as a tool for censorship and oppression, killing Ade Coker and the pro-democracy activist Nwanketi Ogechi, and ransacking Aunty Ifeoma’s apartment. Papa uses violence to enforce his own kind of oppression on his family, as he beats them, whips them, and pours boiling water on them. This violence then leads to more violence in the very attempt to escape it. Just as colonialism resulted in a corrupt independent government, so Papa’s violence compels Mama to poison and murder him. Thus Adichie shows that violence almost always begets more violence, as a method of oppression but also as a struggle for freedom.