Abstract
The paper examines the rebellion of the male child through the concept of the loss of innocence in West African literature. The rebellion of the male child is traced through the successful or unsuccessful development of the human subject, based upon the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud. Generally, growing up can come in other jurisdictions as a realization or self-realization and recognition. In this sense, it is usually thought of as an experience or period in a person’s life that leads to a greater awareness of evil, pain and/or suffering in the world around them. In Ngozie’s novel, Purple Hibiscus, almost all the characters, both youth and adults, go through a kind of loss of innocence. The most notable experience of loss of innocence, however, occurred in the lives of the two protagonists of the novel – Kambili and Jaja ‘ the two teenage children of the Eugene Achike family. The story is enacted through the eyes of Kambili, the younger sibling of Jaja; but the interest of this analysis is on Jaja, the male child in the family. The Achike family’s seamless flow of life is disrupted suddenly by Jaja’s rebellion against his father, Eugene Achike, during Holy Week, striking at Eugene’s most cherished values which he sought to inculcate in his children and the family. The situation sets up a conflict that needs resolution, but only when the source of the change of behaviour in Jaja can be identified. Some suggest moral questions (rules and regulations and institutions), the political (power and the exercise of power and oppression), and other basis to explain the conflict. This paper attempts to focus on the fact of the centrality of the family as the locus of the formation of the human subject and to locate the conflict in the conscious and unconscious, using a psychoanalytic theory to examine the disruption of the family and the rebellion of the male child leading to a loss of innocence and the possible consequences for mental health in African Society.
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