Purple Hibiscus Essay

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Many of the books we have read this semester contained a variety of archetypes for the main characters. For instance in Purple Hibiscus written by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, we could see that the principal character Eugene is a tragic hero. This essay will elaborate on how his cultural background affected his judgment, how it made all of his attempts at doing the right thing distorted to his family. Also how the integration of the white colonizer’s culture made him into a powerful man, a hero, a model just like Jacobo, another main character in Weep Not, Child, while being the opposite of Okonkwo. Furthermore I will finish with how his one way perspective, which lead to his death by his own family, makes him a tragic hero. To start with, Eugene is a tragic hero because his cultural background and beliefs are the ones from the white colonizers and they distort the results of his actions. For example this could be seen at many instance in the book Purple Hibiscus, when Eugene decides to punish his family but especially his children. He is convinced that the way he punishes them is for their own sake and they have to atone their sin under God’s will. Near the
He knows that it isn’t what his father would have wanted nor what his sister wants. Eugene persists on having a Catholic funeral because it is his way of thinking, but in the end he only wants to help atone the burden of the death by paying for everything related to the funeral. We know that in the end Eugene paid in its entirety for a pageant funeral because he still cares for his father even though it didn’t show that much. The upbringing of colonial culture made Eugene into a tragic hero because his actions were always giving him an outcome that he didn’t want deep inside of him. He cared for his family and wanted the best for them but it would for most of the time not show that

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