The 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.

In the historical fiction The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver portrays the American perspective on Africa with the use of a physical representation. In the beginning of the novel, the Price family, the protagonists and narrators, have their own perspective of their journey in a village of Kilanga which is located in South Africa in a congo. The family came with mindsets of missionaries because the father of the family, Nathan, has the desire to spread the word of God and the religion of Christianity throughout the the Congo. However, his unusually amount of urge to change the faith and religion of the African people demonstrate the American perspective because of the ignorance and the lack of acknowledgement of the people and setting. Thus, Barbara Kingsolver uses Nathan as a physical representative of the American perspective. In order to demonstrate the arrogance of the American perspective on the African people, Barbara Kingsolver dramatizes the tension between Nathan and the African people, suggesting that the American people view their principles more superior than principles of the African people despite the difference in setting and influences.

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

Nathan Price struggles with survivor's guilt from WWII. This grief weighs him down, and it not only causes him to be hard on himself personally, it causes him to be hard on his wife and four daughters. He sees himself as a coward, however, in order to hide how he truly views himself, he shows himself off as brave and strong. In reality, Nathan is a coward for hiding himself behind God, and a selfish man for not letting himself commiserate with others. Along with trying to make himself seem like something he is not, he convinces himself that he is going to save the souls of the Congolese people using God’s power. In reality, he is just trying to save his spot in Heaven since he is so guilty about not dying in WWII. Nathan Price has a certain moral code and if anyone, including his family, disobeys it, he believes they should then be punished by God. He also thinks that God will frown upon any actions that are not centered on God. For example, Nathan does not even take the time to love his own wife and daughters. "Father would sooner watch us all perish one by one than listening to anybody but himself"

Throughout a lifetime, many things are gained; experience, wisdom, knowledge, as well as a sure sense of self. But along with all these great things come regret, guilt, and shame of past events. Everyone deals with these in different ways, sometimes turning to religion and denial as coping mechanisms. In the novel The Poisonwood Bible, By Barbara Kingsolver, each member of the Price family deals with a personal guilt either gained while on their mission in the Congo or long before. This novel exemplifies the different types of guilt the Price family experienced throughout their stay in the Congo, and shows various means of reconciliation and forgiveness as the guilt is absolved.

No one shows the oppression, inflicted upon the Congo’s people in hope of spreading imperialism, better than the main characters in this story. Nathans only goal is to convert all of the native people’s beliefs to Christianity. By hoping to doing this, they will be able to grasp control and establish their dominance upon the village. This can be seen through Orleannas thoughts, "We aimed for no more than to have dominion over every creature that moved upon the earth. And so it came to pass that we stepped down there on a place we believed unformed, where only darkness moved on the face of the waters." (Kingsolver 10). Kingsolver shows that individuals are always going to want and demand control, however the victims of this oppression will fight past it and won’t give in. Many people have come before the Price family, trying to do the same thing. However, the natives are smarter than to give into their new ideologies.

In The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver uses symbolism within her characters to portray the insidious nature of Western civilization asserting their ideals and politics into the post-colonial African Congo, undercut with a description of the events of the time.

The Poisonwood Bible is a book about a man named Nathan Price who takes his wife and four daughters on a mission into the Congo. All of their ups and downs are documented throughout the story. This novel was written by Barbara Kingsolver in 1998. This story was inspired from her own personal trip that her father took her on, to the Congo, where they lived without and water, electricity, and many other necessities. During the time period that this book was being written, a lot of feminist and post-colonial literature was being acknowledged. Feminist literature is both nonfiction and fiction that supports women by defending political, economic and social rights for women. Many works of feminist literature depict strong willed women who

Throughout Barbara Kingsolver’s novel The Poisonwood Bible, the downfall of the Price family is enclosed through the words of each family member. One may blame Nathan Price, the father of the Price family, for the downfall of his family. Therefore, his preaching is poisonous to his loved ones. During their time in the Congo, the women of the Price family constantly wish to return back home, but it is Nathan who forces their stay. Nathan poisons his family through his abusive behavior towards his family, and ultimately kills his daughter, Ruth May. Aside from poisoning his own family, Nathan Price also poisons the African people. Towards the end of the novel, Adah Price goes into detail about the mistakes that have taken place in the copies of the Bible. For

An instance being in the literary device of the foreshadowing of Ruth May’s death. Although Nathan Price believes he is going all he can to save the Congolese in God’s name his daughter dies. For someone doing such a good deed of enlightening those who don’t know of christianity he was punished. The foreshadowing presents itself in the Book Four chapter title name of Bel and the Serpent in which case Ruth May dies due to a snake. Nathan Price serves as an example of how being extremely faithful in his religion to which he has become blind poses danger to those around him.

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver uses two extremely contrasting places in the Congo and the United States in order to represent contrasting ideas. The United States represents civility and home for the Price family, while Congo in contrast represents a much more savage, sinister, and less developed country throughout the novel. The two places are major contrasts of each and represent entirely different ideas.

In the novel The Poisonwood Bible, written by Barbara Kingsolver, the reader is introduced to the Price family, Baptist missionaries who are attempting to “Christianize” the country of Congo, more specifically the village of Kilanga. As the story progresses, the family realizes that they are not changing the Congo; instead, the Congo is changing them. The development of the characters within the novel is due to the instrument of cruelty. Although distasteful to regard it as such, cruelty motivates the development and choices of its subjects, whether politically, culturally, or socially. Rendering itself as a main theme throughout the book, different aspects of cruelty are illustrated through the interactions of the Price family, internally and externally, as well as the overall relationship between the “white men” and Congo, or more generally the continent of Africa.

1. TITLE and AUTHOR The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver 2. HISTORICAL DATE THE BOOK WAS PUBLISHED 1998 3.

From a land of poverty, rises a country of evil. The Price family stumbles upon a plethora of misfortunes upon the first month of their arrival to the Congo. What is meant to be a mission trip instantly turns into an experience of uncertainty. Leah, a member of the Price family, even states “Without that rock of certainty underfoot, the Congo is a fearsome place to have to sink or swim” (Kingsolver 244). Throughout The Poisonwood Bible, written by Barbara Kingsolver, the Republic of Congo owns the residents; with it’s revenge for betrayal of traditions, the multiple extremities within it, and the inability for further modernization, the Congo inevitably controls everything within it.

The novel opens with a narrative directive, to the reader: Imagine a ruin so strange it must never have happened. First picture the forest. I want you to be its conscience, the eyes in the trees. The effect of the directive is that it puts the reader in the setting the author wants the book to be seen in. This directive suggests that something has happened that left the forest with ruins in it. When Orleanna narrerates and mentions “you” it appears she is talking to death or a higher power that has some control over her life. The disasters Orleanna talks about are how people and nations turned on the Congo and how people turned on her. She is telling the story looking back on Africa because it seems she is nearing the end of her life slowly not really doing anything anymore just reflecting and her kids telling it as it’s happening because they are younger and still have lives ahead of them.