ABSTRACT

This essay explores the themes of identity crisis and healing in Chimamanda Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus. The paper adopts the theory of New Criticism in the examination of identity crisis and healing as manifested by some traumatized characters in the text. Using a textual qualitative approach, this analysis turns a penetrating eye into the questions of crisis with one’s self and catalysts behind healing among characters in the text. The story focuses on the life of Kambili and her journey from silence to questioning. The novel has majority of its themes on violence and religion, however this research would focus on hidden themes that are present in the novel, such as; identity crisis and healing. For the theme of identity crisis, this research probes into the lives of Beatrice, Jaja and Kambili in that order. We see how each of these previously mentioned characters go through an identity crisis through the roundness of each of the character. This research explains, through significant excerpts in the text, how each of the characters start with one identity at the initial stage of the novel and struggles with a hidden identity at a later stage. For the theme of healing, this study uses the theory New Criticism to pinpoint catalysts responsible for the process of healing in the lives of Beatrice, Jaja and Kambili.