payment page
Summary: Breaking Gods: Palm Sunday
It’s Palm Sunday. Kambili, her brother Jaja, and their parents—Papa and Mama—return to their grand home in Enugu, Nigeria, after attending Mass. At Mass, the family had sat in the front pew as usual, listening to Father Benedict praise Brother Eugene Achike, Kambili’s papa, for his large donations to the church, and Papa was first to take communion. But today, Jaja didn’t go up to the altar. At home, Papa scolds Jaja for not taking communion, and Jaja talks back. In a rage, Papa picks up a huge religious book and throws it at Jaja. The book misses Jaja but hits Mama’s ceramics collection and shatters the delicate figurines. Mama calmly cleans the mess from the marble floor. Papa sits down to drink his tea. Kambili wonders why Papa does nothing more. At lunch, Sisi, the family’s cook and housekeeper, serves them a new flavor of juice from Papa’s factory. Mama and Kambili praise the product as expected of them, but Jaja says nothing and excuses himself before prayers. Kambili chokes on her juice and becomes sick. Lying in bed that night, she realizes that Jaja’s defiance is like the purple hibiscus that grows in Aunty Ifeoma’s garden in Nsukka.
Analysis
The importance of religion to the Achike family is apparent from the very beginning of the narrative. Kambili, the narrator, demonstrates how religion frames her family’s life as she sets up the telling of their story in four parts: Palm Sunday, Before Palm Sunday, After Palm Sunday, and The Present. On Palm Sunday, Mama is fastidious as she knots the palm fronds that have been bathed in holy water into cross shapes and hangs them on the wall. Papa is not only devout but is also a prominent member of the church, and he accordingly sits in the front pew for Mass and is always the first to take communion, kneeling as he takes it even as others do not. When Father Benedict praises Papa’s dedication to the church during his sermon, highlighting Papa’s willingness to stand up for Christianity and his generosity to the church, Papa demonstrates a pious modesty. Later at lunch, Papa prays over their food for an excessive amount of time. The fact that Jaja does not take communion is a shock, and the narrative hints that this departure from the family’s meticulous religious practices will be a catalyst for change.
In the very first scene, Papa demonstrates the domestic violence that will suffuse the narrative and rule the lives of those in his household. Papa’s apparent bewilderment before he throws the missal shows that Jaja’s defiance is unexpected. Papa is quick to demonstrate his rage, however, as he picks up the heavy book and throws it at his son. He misses his intended target because he is flustered, but the shattering of the glass figurines is symbolic of Mama’s victimization. That she usually polishes the figurines after her husband has beaten her shows that they are a source of comfort and a distraction from her physical and emotional suffering. Though Papa’s destruction of the figurines themselves is unintentional, the act proves that his unchecked rage is dangerous and destructive. His use of a religious tool as a weapon also represents his justification of his abusive fanatical religious views, which he uses to keep his family under his thumb. The silence that follows this episode is evidence of Papa’s control over his family. As Kambili reflects on the incident and the broken figurines, she feels that the world is crumbling around her. The control that Papa holds over the family is so strong that Kambili can’t imagine a world where anyone can stand up to him and escape unscathed.
With the introduction of Father Benedict, the theme of tension between traditional ways and colonialism emerges. Father Benedict is white and European, and his arrival at St. Agnes, the Achike family’s parish, brings along great change. Father Benedict insists that Mass is recited in Latin rather than in the native Igbo language. He also requires that the services be conducted in a European way, such as keeping hand clapping to a minimum. He does allow some songs to be sung in Igbo, but when he calls them “native” songs it is with distaste. Although the family is Nigerian, Papa uses a traditional European china tea set with pink flowers to drink his tea. This shows Papa’s preference for European ways introduced by colonialism over the traditions of Nigeria. Later at lunch, when Papa speaks in Igbo, Kambili takes it as a bad sign, since Papa does not consider Igbo to be civilized and therefore doesn’t often speak the native language. Papa’s constant efforts to keep his family in living within rigid colonial ideals often rob them of the instinctual freedoms and joy found in traditional Igbo practices.
