The Poisonwood Bible Analysis

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

said, ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ and again, ‘The Lord judge his people.” Nathan

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 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.

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.

Women are not often given the chance to tell a story from their perspective, especially not in literature written in the 20th century, as most books were dominated by the over barring voices of a singular male narrator. The Poisonwood Bible utilizes five female narrators, setting it apart from other books as it creates five different voices all telling the same story, all teaching the same lessons. In The Poisonwood Bible, written by Barbara Kingsolver, Rachel's voice is used to demonstrate the difficulties in adapting to a culture that differs from one an individual is initially raised in.

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.

Throughout many novels different characters are sent to a new place to explore and find new things in life. An excellent example would be how the characters in the novel Poisonwood Bible explore a new lifestyle in the Congo. While they are there they have to learn how to adapt to a new life, and they try and teach the Congolese people how to worship the God, Jesus Christ. Even though the Congolese people may believe in different Gods, the Price family, especially Nathan feels that it is their duty to teach them different ways. Thus the poem We Grow Accustomed To The Dark by Emily Dickinson, is similar because it is talking about how people become accustomed to a different lifestyle just like the Price family did in the Poisonwood Bible. In

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.

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.