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Examples Of Narcissism In Purple Hibiscus

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In Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Eugene is affected by his cultural, physical, and even emotional surroundings. These surroundings often wrongly justify his abusive and controlling behavior towards his family. This illuminates the whole meaning of the work by portraying the difficulty people often have breaking away from something or someone who hurts them, or in this case, Eugene.
Eugene uses the cultural surrounding of his religion to wrongly justify his abusive behavior. This is clear when Eugene burns Kambili’s feet supposedly in the name of the lord and against sin, “So you saw the sin clearly and you walked right into it?” I nodded. “Yes, Papa.” “Kambili, you are precious.” His voice quavered now, like someone speaking …show more content…

This is apparent, even in the first few pages when Kambili says, “I meant to say I am sorry Papa broke your figurines, but the words that came out were, “I’m sorry your figurines broke, Mama.”(10). His family members continuously shift blame away from him, and try to hide their emotions. Beatrice hides hers by polishing figurines. Kambili hides hers by continuously trying to please him, and make him happy. Jaja sometimes did this by not discussing the abuse with Kambili, but from very early on in the book is the only one who doesn’t necessarily make excuses for papa. What Jaja does do, of course, is continuously take the blame for everything in order to protect Kambili and his mother.The suppressed emotions in the family because of Eugenes abuse and his place in society, which makes combating that abuse difficult, eventually lead to a breaking point. The abuse gets too hard and life threatening, and when those figurines break, the emotions boil over and Eugene ends up dead. The figurines in a way, represented the way people saw the family, perfect and polished. When Eugene breaks the figurines, the truth comes out. The container that once held the suffering emotions breaks open. And, in turn, “the center cannot hold”. Eugene poisoned his family with his narcissism and abuse, and Beatrice could not take it any longer or see any other way out, which is why she poisoned him. But really, Eugene poisoned himself with his destructive and falsely justified

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