Poisonwood Bible Analysis

1. Barbara Kingsolver explores a quest in her novel “The Poisonwood Bible”. The criteria of a quest consist of a quester, a destination, a purpose, challenges, and reasons for the quest. In this instance the quester is Orlenna Price whom demonstrate guilt consistently. Orlenna is going there to accompany her husband, who is seeking to convert others. She feels guilty due to the death of her daughter and now that guilt remains as one of the challenges she faces. This is mostly transparent when she says “How do we aim to live with it?” (Kingsolver 9). Her guilt revolves around the destination to the Congo. Due to the Congo her one of her children survives. Now she has to deal with that challenge which is her guilt.

Book two is entitled “The Revelation” and the girls’ sections is entitled “The Things We Learned.” The Revelation was intended to mainly the Price family, excluding the father. The theme revelation has another definition: apocalypse. In the bible, the apocalypse leads to destruction and demise right before when God makes it a better place. In connection to the book, at this time the new prime minister, Patrice Lumumba was elected. This election set the stage for the independence movement in the Congo. In addition, Methuselah (the parrot) passes away as soon as he is freed, after being banned from liberation for most of his life. This foretells the destiny of Congo and the delicate independence they acquired. The Book of Revelation explains about how God’s creation encountered savagery and anguish so that it will become altered. The Belgian doctor who treats Ruth May for her broken arm has a little conflict with the Reverend. He prophesies that Congo will experience savagery and anguish if it changes to a self-determining state from a colony. In the Revelation section of the story, all the members of the Price family come to face a new sense of comprehension about the Congo’s culture, plants, animals and tradition. Throughout the book, the characters go through many hardships and success which permits them to learn

Imperialism has been a strong and long lasting force, oppressing societies for generations on end. The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver, demonstrates how the Congo is continuously affected by this concept and ideology. Throughout this story, Kingsolver manipulates each family member and individual within the book, to better show Western and European ideas and attitudes, to convey the large amount of hypocrisy, in foreigner’s actions.

Barbara Kingsolver is the author of many well-written pieces of literature including The Poisonwood Bible. This novel explores the beauty and hardships that exist in the Belgian Congo in 1959. Told by the wife and four daughters of a fierce Baptist, Nathan Price, Kingsolver clearly captures the realities this family and mission went through during their move to the Congo. The four daughters were raised in Atlanta Georgia in the 1950’s therefore entering the Congo with preconceived racial beliefs, and a very different way of life than they would soon experience. Throughout The Poisonwood Bible Kingsolver explores the importance and impact of faith, and a religion based on your own private beliefs.

In The Poisonwood Bible, the novel opens with a narrative instruction, and it has an effect on the reader in one main way. The directive is meant to make the reader put him/herself in the setting of the story, and read it as if you are in the novel. In the opening paragraph, it tells us, “I want you to be its conscience, the eyes in the trees,” which is telling the reader to read the novel as if you are there (Kingsolver 5). This suggests about the novel that the Price family is going to do missionary work in Africa, and there are going to be events that occur to show what happens when they go to Africa. When Orleanna continues her narration, the “you” that she is speaking to appears to be the God that she believes in. Orleanna states, “Your bright eyes bear down on me without cease,” which shows that she is talking to someone from above (Kingsolver 7). The great disasters that Orleanna alludes is when her and her family do missionary work in Africa. The reason why she is telling the story looking back on Africa and the girls tell it as if it is happening is because they both have different perspectives on the whole situation. Orleanna is talking about something that she has experienced while she was in Africa, and the girls talk about stuff that happens in their everyday lives. Orleanna is talking about the whole trip at one time, while the girls take it step by step.

In a world full of blame and lack of accountability, an individual’s role in injustice needs to be questioned. In the early 1960’s, after many years under Belgian rule, the Congolese people formed an uprising and gained independance. However, the Congo was ill prepared for the organization that independence demanded. The Soviet Union offered aid to the Prime Minister of the Congo. Since this was during the Cold War, the United States retaliated and supported a coup led by Colonel Joseph Mobutu. Mobutu ruled with an iron fist, resulting in pain and oppression of the Congolese. Looking back on history, it is easy to see who was at fault. But at the time, it was not easy to identify blame, especially for the Americans. Barbara Kingsolver wrote about the Congo’s trials much later in 1991. She used a narration from baptist missionary family to symbolize the different kinds of guilt Americans share. In Anne M. Austenfield’s narrative journal, she described Kingsolver’s ability to use, "several character-focalizers whose limited perspectives project highly subjective views of history" (Austenfeld). This technique allowed for Kingsolver to not only produce a more reliable account of what occurred, but to depict her desired theme and message. Kingsolver, in her novel The Poisonwood Bible, uses a political allegory to explore the different notions of guilt through the limited perspectives of her characters.

In the novel The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver an American family seeks to change the Congo through the use of their Baptist faith. While in truth the father Nathan Price sets out to change the world and ends up dragging his wife and four daughters along for the ride. His family supported his mission on changing the Congo in the beginning, but his second daughter would be the one to support him long after his plan began to falter. Leah Price would follow Nathan anywhere he wished to direct her until she realized that maybe it was her that need to direct herself. Through the development of Leah Price and her new found independence and loss of respect for her father, Kingsolver shows that the arrogance of preconceived ideas of one body of people can cause one to overlook

It is hard to believe that some of the worst atrocities in The Poisonwood Bible are true events and even more shocking is how little America’s hand in the Congo’s corruption are discussed “What sort of man would wish to murder the president of another land? None but a barbarian”(p.311). Which is more uncivilised the “dusty run-down shacks for the Congolese”(p.182), or “Leopoldville[‘s] nice paved streets for the whites”(p.182), streets that were paved with stolen riches and built upon stolen land? Or perhaps the most uncivilised of all are the people filling their grocery carts with “things a person doesn’t really need”(p.447) while paying no attention to the people who must “deliberate between damp dirt and bone dust to quiet the fire of an empty stomach lining”(p.447) unless they are graciously donating some unwanted clothing or forcing some unwanted religion down the throats of the people they robbed, corrupted, and

It is unfortunate how often we hear about a disaster occurring in Africa. From civil wars in Somalia and Congo, famine in Yemen and viruses spreading through Liberia, people associate Africa as being chaotic, violent, corrupt, and incredibly poor to the point many Americans still believe animals freely roam in the cities. Naturally, many people and organizations feel the need to bring order and peace to the continent, by policing it, spreading the word of God among the natives, or provide resources such as food, water, or money. However, most people never take the time to learn of African culture and traditions, or understand that some Africans are content with what they have and how things work. We label them as being poor because they do not match our preconceptions of happiness, as we believe living comfortably with others leads to happiness.

Throughout the story, Kingsolver uses a common motif in that of the idea of adaptation and conforming to a different view of life. Most of the characters undergo this change, except obviously Nathan. The change does not come immediately, but for Orleanna and three of her four daughters - Leah, Rachel, and Adah - this is a change that is noticeable. The change would have also likely come to Ruth May, and in some ways it did, but she died midway through the story due to a snake bite.

The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbra Kingsolver, draws the reader into the chaotic African Congo, where the Price family is dragged into on a mission of God, to help the unsaved souls of this “wasteland”. Leader of the missionary family, Nathan Price is a man who is bent on eternal salvation for all the people of the Congo –whether they want it or not– and will not quit in his mission, regardless the consequences. Price is a volatile man, as Kingsolver points out by Nathans’ religious fervor, apparent sexist attitude, and belligerent nature.

In the Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, Nathan opposes the views of the entire village and the country. Although, Nathan's views conflict with African society, that doesn't stop him from trying to convert them. Nathan's brash behavior creates chaos and eventually splits his family apart. Nathans past and personality explain why he feels like the missionary work is essential in the Congo. Nathan’s case is symbolic of the colonization of Africa by the western culture.

Barbara Kingsolver’s, The Poisonwood Bible, is a story about the lives of the Price Family women and how a year of missionary work while living in the Congo forever changed their lives. A very important aspect of the plot in The Poisonwood Bible is that the husband of the Price family, Nathan, is the entire reason for the story. His unyielding desire to become a missionary and carry out what he believed to be God’s work is what led to the families living in the Congo and destroying the bonds the Prices had with each other. Throughout the story Nathan Price is presented as an arrogant southern Baptist preacher with a twisted sense of his place in the world. Having no regard for women as anything but housewives with little intelligence, he is depicted as an abusive husband and father. Nathan Price is described as being a changed man from his younger days. Fighting in WWII had changed him for life.

Throughout the duration of “The Poisonwood Bible” one truth remains increasing evident, the westerners, the christians, and even the United States of America have no business messing around in the affairs of the Congo, a people they know so little about. Nathan Price, so sure that he can save these uncivilized people, the Tribe of Ham, from God’s wrath, he sacrifices his own family. It turns out however, that he, like those before him, the Underdowns, and the US misunderstand the local customs, ultimately leading to their failure. “The White Man’s Burden” by Rudyard Kipling is a very famous poem that takes the opposite stance to that of Barbara Kingsolver. Kipling argues that it is the more civilized, more intellectual, more holy white man

It is clear that the Congo can be associated with many qualities. One of the most significant qualities of the region is the quality of disorder and chaos. It is what Marlow first realizes within the Congo upon seeing the French warship shelling the empty coastline on the threat of “a camp of natives” and the Outer Station’s “decaying machinery” (Conrad 11,12). Here, we see an environment that possesses none of the traits that make up European civilization. The unfamiliar landscape causes the Europeans to become disoriented and paranoid to the point where they see anything as a possible threat and