Quotations

Question 1

Violence/Papa’s abuse

Answer 1

• When Kambili was once late to be picked up, Papa ‘slapped (her) left and right cheeks at the same time’
• ‘He unbuckled his belt slowly’ (sexual connotations- Electra complex)
• When Mama asks to stay in the car while the rest of the family visits Father Benedict, as she feels ‘vomit in (her) throat’, Papa guilts her into going in, and later describes her as putting her “selfish desires first”
• ‘Swift, heavy thuds on my parents’ hand-carved bedroom door’
• ‘Every breath was agony’ (when Kambili ends up in the hospital)

Question 2

Papa/Kambili’s relationship with Papa

Answer 2

• ‘I wanted to touch his face, run my hand over his rubbery cheeks’
• ‘When the tea burned my tongue, it burned Papa’s love into me’
• ‘I had never considered the possibility that Papa would die, that Papa could die’ ‘ He had seemed immortal’

Question 3

Mama

Answer 3

• ‘Mama sounded like a recording’ (when Mama tells Kambili that Papa was found dead)
• ‘Try and make your scarf tighter, Mama’ (Kambili to Mama after Papa dies)
• ‘This vision of a painfully bony body, of skin speckled with blackheads the size of watermelon seeds’- presentation of Mama at the end echoes the rash that Papa had all over his face at the beginning of the novel that ‘made his skin look bloated’ (when Mama was poisoning him):

Question 4

Kambili’s personality/character development

Answer 4

• ‘I usually spent long break reading in the library’
• Is described by classmates as a ‘Backyard snob’
• ‘I dreamed that Amaka submerged me in a toilet bowl full of greenish-brown lumps’
• ‘I wish I had said that before Jaja did’
• ‘As we drove back to Enugu, I laughed loudly’ (after Papa’s death)

Question 5

Theme of freedom vs tyranny

Answer 5

• ‘speaking with our spirits’
• ‘I pressed my lips together, biting my lower lip, so my mouth would not betray me’ (at Church when Father Amadi is singing)
• ‘I was not sure I had ever heard myself laugh’ (in Nsukka)

Question 6

Jaja

Answer 6

• ‘Jaja’s defiance seemed to me now like Aunty Ifeoma’s experimental purple hibiscus: rare, fragrant with the undertones of freedom’
• ‘I should have taken care of Mama’ (after Papa dies)

Question 7

Colonization/politics

Answer 7

• ‘Papa changed his accent when he spoke, sounding British, just as he did when he spoke to Father Benedict’

Question 8

Miscellaneous

Answer 8

• ‘It was what Aunty Ifeoma did to my cousins, I realized then, setting higher and higher jumps for them’ ‘It was different for Jaja and me. We did not scale the rod because we believed we could, we scaled it because we were terrified that we couldn’t’