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Purple Hibiscus Response

So far, I am enjoying reading Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Right away the timeline of events in the book is in a different order which I find interesting. The novel is separated into sections titled "Palm Sunday", "Before Palm Sunday", "After Palm Sunday", and "Present". This creates a sense of mystery as to what happens on Palm Sunday and why the novel is based off of this one day. Also with the sections, they are titled relating to the religious Palm Sunday. This shows the novel has a religious aspect which determines much of how the family lives.

Another aspect of the book I find interesting is how much Papa controls his children's lives. He creates strict weekly schedules for his entire family. He also administers his children's participation in school and their grades. He holds Kambili and Jaja to extremely high expectations and does not accept anything lower than the best. An example of this is how disappointed he was in Kamibili for being second in her class. He visits her school making a statement of how Chinwe does not have two heads, to prove that there are no excuses for her coming in second. While parental control is important in children's lives, it will be interesting to see how Kambili and Jaja react to this level of control.

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