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Our literature review shows that Adichie’s works, including Purple Hibiscus, recognize gender marginalization in areas undermined by many African authors. These areas includeparenting and child development that determine individual emotional stabilityand social responsibility. This study interrogates the form of cultural upbringing of a child which stifles the unconscious selfhood of an individual whose existential being is subject to both the conscious and the unconscious. The study focuses onthe subtleties of parenting and character formation in Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus. Tracing individual identity models of ‘dependency’ and ‘autonomy, it further investigates characters’ emotional stability and social responsibilityas outcomes of socio-cultural empowerment through child development processes. The study takes a developmental analysis of characters and circumstances that surround each character’s social behaviour in the novel. This is determined using Erikson’s psychoanalytic models of human development and social r\esponsibility (psychosocial principles). Although parental discipline gives more positive results in child development, extremity, domestic violence and social alienation as child upbringing strategies in Adechie’s Purple Hibiscus are socio-culturally counterproductive.

African traditional drama has been researched from several perspectives. But there are hardly studies fully focusing on the deployment of language to achieve performance goals in particular performances. This failure may have roots in the widely held assumption that verbal language (dialogue) is not a serious element of African traditional drama. Studying language in particular performances will show that there are instances of full and effective deployment of verbal communication in the African traditional drama. This article, therefore, studies language in ewa-ọma performances. Using basic literary appreciation and critical analysis methods, with a new historicist bias, the literary and rhetorical components of language are identified and analyzed according to their space-time relevance in two performances, to demonstrate the manner of realization of dialogue and (inter)weaving of literary and rhetorical strategies. Literary tropes and rhetorical devices are effectively deployed in well-developed dialogues to achieve a satirical goal in the performances.

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