The Poisonwood Bible By Barbara Kingsolver

The Price Family is very religious and has a strong belief in God. Therefore, it only makes sense to have allusions throughout the story. Allusions bring the theme across because it helps the readers to see what happens when someone is guilty. For instance, if the girls do something they are not supposed to do the father, Nathan, would tell the girls “‘you have The Verse’” (Kingsolver 59). The Verse is a punishment to make them feel guilty for something wrong they

In Life, you can’t force people to do something they don’t want to do or be someone they’re not. In the historical fiction novel The Poisonwood Bible, Orleanna Price experiences such a rough quarrel and becomes cut off from her hometown. Orleanna Price who is Nathan’s wife becomes indignant with her husband’s decisions to take a missionary trip to the Congo. She was a very intelligent woman but because of her husband behavior she is sometimes forced to hide her own talents from others. The Price family experience while being in the Congo started to drift their family away from each other as a whole. They were not mentally or physically stable to fit in Africa but with the help of others they were able to get along in the Congo. Mama Mwanza

All families have conflicts, and the Price family is no exception. Within the story there is an overriding conflict regarding the Price women‘s opposition to the move to Africa. Beyond this, Nathan has many other conflicts with each of his daughters. Leah and her father had a very different relationship than the other three Price daughters. Leah is the only daughter that wholeheartedly supports her father completely. As the story moves on she is faced with the harsh realities of daily life in the Congo, and begins to see her Fathers faults. She soon wants to be her own person, and not be controlled by her father. The major parent/child conflict arises when Nathan does not recognize his daughter’s

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.

If The Poisonwood Bible had another name, it would be called injustice among humans because of how much injustices there are between the community. The people of Congo have to carry the heavy burden of the greedy leaders of their own country, and of others like the United States of America, not such a surprise. These atrocious leaders could care less about the million of people suffering because of the affluence for social hierarchy and wealth. Injustice is only caused through affluence. An example of this can be seen in page 123, “I was glad nobody wanted to cut off my hands. Because Jesus made me white, I reckon they wouldn 't,” (Kingsolver). Ruth May, one of the youngest family member of the missionary family, learns about white privileges, a topic considered to still be controversial in today’s society. However, the family quickly learn

(T) Leah, one of the Price twins, explains how her father said that the previous missionary, Brother Fowles, had gone “crazy” after living in the Congo for so long. The Mission League was skeptical to allow the Price’s to come but finally allowed them when no one else wanted to replace Brother Fowles in Kilanga. This introduces the theme of psychological downfall due to environmental factors. (C) Brother Fowles’s mental downfall in The Poisonwood Bible is similar to Kurtz’s surrender to savagery in Heart of Darkness. Although this is early in the novel, this side note could be foreshadowing the inevitable madness as a result of the Western imperialism deep in the Belgian Congo. Both storylines follow the idea of imperialism into the Congo,

Leah Price from “The Poisonwood Bible,” is a teenager in 1950, and Tata Ndu is an old leader of Kilanga, a small village in the Congo. Leah’s family is on a Baptist mission to the Congo and Leah’s family resides in Tata Ndu’s village. Everything the Price family preaches is against the values of the people of KIlanga, namely Tata Ndu. Leah has progressive opinions about women, and Tata Ndu is set in his ways of demeaning women. Leah believes that women should have responsibility outside the home, but Tata Ndu says that women belong in the home. Leah believes that women should choose their husbands, but Tata Ndu is hard in believing that women are property to be bought by men. The conflicting opinions between Tata Ndu and Leah can be blamed

In The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingslayer shows that differences in values and appearance between Africans and the Western world causes cultural arrogance and slavery of the ‘inferior’ race of Africa. There are many other themes depicted in the novel, but this is a main theme that occurs throughout the entire story. The Price family gets thrown into the unstable Congo and the women, not including close-minded Rachel or preadolescent Ruth May, learn how they were wrong about being above Africans. Kingslayer uses the Price family to show how white people misinterpreted Africans and change from feeling ‘superior’ to feeling guilty about what they did to their country.

Despite Kingston not even knowing her aunt’s name, she feels she has a connection to her. Kingston thinks about her aunt’s life and how she became pregnant. At first, Kingston blames the pregnancy on the aunt. She explains that the aunt took time when getting ready and cared about her appearance, which was unusual for Chinese women after they have been married. Kingston describes, “Once my aunt found a freckle on her chin… She dug it out with a hot needle and washed the wound with peroxide” (Kingston 328). This leads Kingston to believe that the aunt had an affair. However, Kingston later believes that her aunt was possibly raped. When describing her aunt’s marriage Kingston writes, “ When the family found a young man in the next village to be her husband, she stood tractable beside the best rooster, his proxy, and promised before they met that she would his forever” (Kingston 326). Chinese women were obedient. Kingston thinks that there could not be the possibility that her aunt cheated on her husband because she was a dutiful wife. Sympathizing with the aunt, Kingston writes, “ I want her fear to have lasted as long as rape lasted so that the fear could have been contained” (Kingston 326). She reflects on how horrible it must have been living in such a small community with her rapist.

The story in this book was about a family named Price going for a mission trip to the Belgian Congo, Africa. It was supposed to be only for a couple months, but at the end they stayed more than they foreseen. The author lets us see the insight of the events as they go through them from 4 out of 5 of the members of the family; Rachel, Adah, Leah, Ruth May, and Orleanna (being the mother). The only one who the author does not let us see is from the father’s point of view. At the beginning the mother is worried about the health issues they might have to go through while staying in the village called Kilanga. While the daughters are more preoccupied in how they are fitting in with the rest of the kids, and being tired of taking so many pills for

The Price family moves to the village of Kilanga in the Belgian Congo because Nathan, the family’s father and husband, believes it is his mission to convert these “uncivilized” people to Christianity. At first the whole family looks up to Nathan and his mission. Orleanna, Leah, Rachel, Adah, and Ruth May all believe they are bringing culture to an “uncivilized”

Be careful. Later on you'll have to decide the sympathy they deserve” (5), this implies that awful incidents will happen to each of these girls, leading their lives to be changed forever. However, these incidents that will happen may be deserved based on the actions and decisions they choose to make, leading them on the path to either “glory” or “damnation”. “The mother especially--watch how she leads them on, pale-eyed, deliberate” (5), this sentence makes it sound as if Orleanna is not as innocent as she seems to say she is and that she may have played a bigger role in the downfall of their family. “I saw a family of weaver birds work together for months on a nest that became such a monstrous lump of sticks and progeny and nonsense that it brought their whole tree thundering down” (8), I think this is alluding that the Price family made many repeated errors and mistakes in the Congo that eventually led to the collapse of their own family. The quotes, “On a more earthly plane men in locked rooms bargained for the Congo's treasure. But I was there. Right on the head of that pin” (8) and “we aimed for no more than to have dominion over every creature that moved upon the

Nathan’s abusive actions towards Orleanna leave her feeling more like “his instrument” or “his animal” then an actual person in a healthy marital relationship (Kingsolver 89). This dehumanization even extends out to the children with Adah saying that her and siblings are “players in [Nathan’s] theater” instead of leaders of their own lives (Kingsolver 213). Dehumanization is particularly detrimental as it inhibits an

A Doll’s House: Money is the Root of All Evil Money is often said to be the root of all evil in the world. After all, money is the main factor in over seventy-five percent of divorces. Money is a very prevalent motif in the play A Doll’s House, though it relates to characters in different ways. For example, for Mrs. Linden, money is something that she must work like a dog to acquire and only works for it as a way to make a living. For Torvald, money is something not to be squandered or borrowed, for when you are in debt, you are not “free and beautiful.”

Rachel Price is the 15 year old daughter of a Christian missionary who has taken himself, his wife and four daughters into Africa to carry out the white man’s burden. This burden is the weight of saving a nation; otherwise, it will succumb to the Devil’s evil ways. Their story is told in The Poisonwood Bible. Rachel shows signs of being unhomed because of her environment. As a daughter, she must listen to her father. As a man of God, Nathan Price, the father, must listen to the words of the Bible. He carries with him his booming words to the darkened souls of the Congo while Rachel endures the visit. She feels resentment towards her father and also to the natives who have taken a liking to Christian rhythms. Regardless of her lack of faith, Rachel feels unease after learning this. “We are supposed to be calling the shots here, but it doesn’t look to me like we’re in charge of anything, not even our own selves” (pg. 22 ). The