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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.
This quotation from Part 1, Breaking Gods, uses the tea Eugene shares with his children as an analogy for how he always shows his love for his children through pain. What should be a sweet family ritual becomes a ridiculous sign of abuse because Eugene forces the children to drink the tea while it’s still too hot. Similarly, whenever Eugene physically punishes Kambili and Jaja, he loudly proclaims that he does so out of love, that punishment shows that he cares enough to correct them. He therefore models for his children that love should hurt.
Why do you think I work so hard to give you and Jaja the best? You have to do something with all these privileges. Because God has given you much, he expects much from you. He expects perfection.
Eugene admonishes Kambili in Part 2, Speaking with Our Spirits, when he lectures her about not coming in first in her class. Although he doesn’t inflict physical pain, Eugene uses emotional pain by making Kambili feel guilty for not living up to his expectations. He implies that because he loves her so much and has given her every opportunity, it is her responsibility to be perfect. This framework means Kambili must live with pain in the form of anxiety to be worthy of her father’s and God’s love.
Papa crushed Jaja and me to his body. “Did the belt hurt you? Did it break your skin?” he asked, examining our faces. I felt a throbbing on my back, but I said no, that I was not hurt. It was the way Papa shook his head when he talked about liking sin, as if something weighed him down.
This passage describes the moment Eugene strikes out at the whole family with his belt after Kambili breaks the pre-Eucharist fast in Part 2, Speaking with Our Spirits. As is common throughout the novel, immediately after physically hurting his children, Eugene becomes sad, contrite, and almost regretful to the point where Kambili feels a need to comfort him. Even though Eugene’s punishments seem to genuinely cause himself pain, he believes he needs to hurt the family he loves because of how love was modeled to him by the Catholic missionaries.
“Kambili, you are precious.” His voice quavered now, like someone speaking at a funeral, choked with emotion. “You should strive for perfection. You should not see sin and walk right into it.” He lowered the kettle into the tub, tilted it toward my feet.
This horrifying scene from Part 2, Speaking with Our Spirits, details how Eugene punishes Kambili for not attempting to leave Aunty Ifeoma’s house when Papa-Nnukwu came to stay there. This moment demonstrates how Eugene believes he can use pain as a protective, educational tool. He doesn’t want Kambili to burn in hell for eternity because she is precious to him, because he loves her so much. He is able to justify Kambili suffering mortal, temporary pain if it teaches her to avoid doing what might bring her eternal pain.
Look what He did to His faithful servant Job, even to His own son. But have you ever wondered why? Why did He have to murder His own son so we would be saved? Why didn’t He just go ahead and save us?
Jaja makes this observation in Part 3, The Pieces of Gods, after Kambili responds to Eugene’s death with religious platitudes. This statement makes the parallel between Eugene’s painful form of love and Eugene’s form of Catholicism. Eugene has made it clear that he believes he hurts his children in order to save them, which Jaja sees as similar to how God has Christ die to save mankind. In this interpretation, even God’s love has to hurt. Jaja ultimately rejects Catholicism for this reason, but Amaka finds a different form of love and Catholicism in Father Amadi.
