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Idioms
Definition of Imagery
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. For instance, the following lines from Robert Frost's poem "After Apple-Picking" contain imagery that engages... read full definition
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. For instance, the following lines from Robert Frost's poem "After... read full definition
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. For instance, the following lines... read full definition
Key Examples in Purple Hibiscus
Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Black-Purple:
When Eugene terrorizes and beats his wife Beatrice, she channels her fear and resentment into the meticulous cleaning of her porcelain ballerina figures. This recurs as a motif throughout Purple Hibiscus. Kambili describes seeing her mother doing this using the visual imagery of swollen, painful flesh contrasting with brittle, delicate ceramics:
I would go down to see her standing by the étagère with a kitchen towel soaked in soapy water. She spent at least a quarter of an hour on each ballet-dancing figurine. There were never tears on her face. The last time, only two weeks ago, when her swollen eye was still the black-purple color of an overripe avocado, she had rearranged them after she polished them.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Love Sip:
In this passage, Adichie describes Kambili taking a “love sip” from her father’s scalding tea. She uses strong tactile imagery and a metaphor of burning to show the painful effects of Eugene’s parenting on Kambili:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The tea was always too hot, always burned my tongue, and if lunch was something peppery, my raw tongue suffered. But it didn’t matter, because I knew that when the tea burned my tongue, it burned Papa’s love into me.
Related Themes:
Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Coconut Breaking:
Adichie uses a simile and visual imagery to explore Kambili’s conflicted feelings toward seeing her father’s beaming smile at church:
Unlock with LitCharts A+It was the same way I felt when he smiled, his face breaking open like a coconut with the brilliant white meat inside.
Related Themes:
Chapter 4
Explanation and Analysis—Soft Endlessness:
Adichie uses a combination of visual and tactile imagery and hyperbole to depict Kambili’s perception of safety with her father as a younger child. This was particularly true during thunderstorms, when he would comfort her:
Unlock with LitCharts A+When I had thought of heaven as a child, I visualized Papa’s room, the softness, the creaminess, the endlessness. I would snuggle into Papa’s arms when harmattan thunderstorms raged outside, flinging mangoes against the window netting and making the electric wires hit each other and spark bright orange flames. Papa would lodge me between his knees or wrap me in the cream blanket that smelled of safety.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Jellylike:
Adichie uses vivid imagery and simile to describe the involuntary movements of Eugene’s aging body, which seem out of place in his rigidly controlled world:
Unlock with LitCharts A+As he climbed the stairs in his red silk pajamas, his buttocks quivered and shook like akamu, properly made akamu, jellylike.
Related Themes:
Chapter 10
Explanation and Analysis—Walk In Sin:
The brutality of Eugene’s punishment for Kambili seeing Papa-Nnukwu is wildly disproportionate to the seriousness of her “crime.” Adichie uses tactile imagery and metaphor to illustrate the warped moral justification of Eugene pouring boiling water on his child’s feet:
Unlock with LitCharts A+I saw the moist steam before I saw the water. I watched the water leave the kettle, flowing almost in slow motion in an arc to my feet. The pain of contact was so pure, so scalding, I felt nothing for a second. And then I screamed.
'‘That is what you do to yourself when you walk into sin. You burn your feet,’ he said.
Related Themes:
Chapter 11
Explanation and Analysis—Meat and Bones:
As Eugene “punishes” Kambili for yet another deviation from his strict rules, Adichie uses simile and tactile imagery to portray the physical and emotional violence Kambili endures:
Unlock with LitCharts A+‘Get up!’ Papa said again. I still did not move. He started to kick me. The metal buckles on his slippers stung like bites from giant mosquitoes. He talked nonstop, out of control, in a mix of Igbo and English, like soft meat and thorny bones.
Related Themes:
Chapter 15
Explanation and Analysis—Body and Blood:
Kambili’s spiritual refreshment and reaffirmation of faith during the pilgrimage to Aokpe are dramatic; she uses visual imagery and hyperbole to describe her experience of witnessing the apparition of the Virgin Mary:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The sun turned white, the color and shape of the host. And then I saw her, the Blessed Virgin: an image in the pale sun, a red glow on the back of my hand, a smile on the face of the rosary-bedecked man whose arm rubbed against mine. She was everywhere.
Related Themes:
Chapter 17
Explanation and Analysis—Surprise Presents:
The liberating atmosphere of Nsukka could not be more different from the oppressive environment of Enugu. At the end of the novel, Kambili uses visual imagery to describe how she feels about leaving Nsukka and driving back to Enugu, where Jaja is now imprisoned:
Unlock with LitCharts A+As we drove back to Enugu, I [...] laughed because Nsukka's untarred roads coat cars with dust in the harmattan and with sticky mud in the rainy season. Because the tarred roads spring potholes like surprise presents and the air smells of hills and history and the sunlight scatters the sand and turns it into gold dust. Because Nsukka could free something deep inside your belly that would rise up to your throat and come out as freedom song. As laughter.
Related Themes:
