The Poisonwood Bible By Barbara Kingsolver

“The longer she lives in Kilanga, the clearer Orleanna's vision becomes” state's Ognibene in her essay, in reference to orleanna's realisation that her husband is controlling and toxic. Kingsolver has shifted the “Missionary” role from Nathan to Orleanna, by shedding light on the misdemeanors of Nathan’s ways, and the purity of Orleannas.

In the novel, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, Kingsolver uses different literary techniques to develop the harsh setting and have the characters look weak and overwhelmed. The literary techniques used to define the characters and the setting are violent imagery and violent juxtaposition.

Orleanna is the mother of four daughters and her being this character as well as her personality of being caring and invested in others creates her purpose for the story as retelling the story of her family and their trip to the Congo. She is creating this scene to show what happened and how she has learned from this experience and hopes to improve others lives based on her experiences. In the political allegory, Orleanna is the person in the world who has seen the wrong doing’s of the world, in this case the imperialism of countries, and advises those to step up and support the cause bettering lives of those less fortunate. Her character creates a call to action through the miseries she has seen her family struggle through. The author’s purpose in writing The Poisonwood Bible is to not only show the different influences and outcomes that colonialism has on people and nations, but to also show that it is wrong and not necessarily the superior way of doing something. Orleanna is the spokesperson for how the colonialism is wrong and something must

how Nathan’s neglect of his family affected Orleanna greatly. “ For six years, from age nineteen

Bible, Orleanna Price values only her daughters and herself. Through her sacrifices can this value

From the time people are born to their last moments of childhood, they invest in an object of security, something to keep them safe, something to always be there. The true mark of adulthood comes from abandoning this security item to walk forward without any weight. Just like all people, Leah in Barbara Kingsolver’s “The Poisonwood Bible” was no different. Leah spent her whole life clinging on to her father, Nathan, and as a result, she was blinded to what truly mattered to her. The loving presence of a family could not be seen behind his controlling ways. Her dependence on him kept herself from realizing whom she actually cared about. Moreover, the reliance on Nathan meant her actions were truly not her own. Rather

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, “Call it oppression, complicity stupefaction, call it what you’d like, it doesn’t matter. Africa swallowed the conqueror’s music and sang a new song of her own” (Kingsolver 385). 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.

The Poisonwood Bible is the story of the Price family and their journey in the Congo. The novel is told from the perspective of the daughters Rachel, Leah, Adah, and Ruth May. The family suffers because of their father Nathan Price’s selfishness. The villainous acts of Nathan result in the loss of a family member and the feeling of guilt bestowed among all of the characters.

The influences of the animals of the Congo changes Oreleanna’s perspective in the Price family. The Congo has influenced Oreleanna to view

The closing of Poisonwood Bible recapitulates all that has happened throughout the eyes of no other than Ruth May, watching from the trees. She leaves the reader and he family with peace, she is not angry, she is not upset, she is content. “Being dead is not worse than being alive” (538). Ruth May’s insightful voice echoes that of her mothers in the beginning. Ruth May has matured, not only in her diction but her purpose has to morphed into

Nathan’s character has an obsession with authority, and this obsession prevents him from forming healthy relationships with his wife and children. The mother-daughter and sibling bonds are much stronger than any bond the women have with the father. This creates distance within the family, and the author creates a very pessimistic tone towards Nathan’s character, which contributes to the reader’s negative mood towards him. Whether it be one of the Price daughters talking about how Nathan has a short temper, gets frustrated when something does not go his way, how he disrespects the Price women on the whole, or Orleanna Price explaining how Nathan uses her like a doormat, Nathan is very clearly not well-liked.

Much like Natty Bumpo in The Last of the Mohicans, Nathan sets out to expand the boundaries, not of America, but of Christianity. His inroads into the frontier have destructive repercussions that are disguised as progress. Just like James Fenimore Cooper, this author deals with the "ideal boundary" that is the "frontier" and the difference between the "civilized and cultivated" and the "wild and Lawless" (Fiedler 179). Kingsolver adds to this list, however, the 'Christian and heathen' in much the same way. Nathan Price refuses to see the beauty of the system that is in place and struggles to bend Africa to his will; however, the real story lies in the women.

We live in a paternalistic society which is defined as a society controlled and run by men. Men not only dominate in government and business, but they also make the rules for the world that we live in. It is said to be a "man 's world." In essentially every past and present known society, women have not been treated as the full equals of men. A woman 's main value is to support a man, bear children, and housekeeping duties. This is how it has always been in most cultures. The novel, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, shows the paternalistic society in which the Price family lives in. In 1959 an obstinate Baptist minister named Nathan Price drags his wife and four daughters deep into the heart of the Congo on a mission to save the unenlightened souls of Africa. Nathan Price is a prime example of an arrogant father. He, a servant of God, seems to think that he is God. This complex is magnified by the fact that the minister has a low opinion of the female sex in general, and he does not exclude his daughters or his wife. In a society where men and women are not seen as equals, women struggle to find their identity.

Be careful. Later on you'll have to decide the sympathy they deserve” (Kingsolver 5), this implies that incidents will happen to each of these girls, some of which will lead to their lives to be changed forever. However, these incidents that occur may be deserved based on the actions and decisions they choose, leading them on the path to either “glory” or “damnation”. “The mother’s comment –“watch how she leads them on, pale-eyed, deliberate” (Kingsolver 5), 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” (Kingsolver 8). I think this is symbolic of the Price family’s 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” (Kingsolver 8) and “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) allude to the disaster that happened in Africa when the Western countries tried to assert control over the continent, spiraling the local governments into chaos and civil wars. “Vines strangling their own kin in the everlasting wrestle” alludes to how Orleanna's husband, Nathan, made his own children suffer in the Congo due to his selfish ways of trying to force Baptism onto the

The Poisonwood Bible is a novel that near-perfectly encapsulates themes of religion, difference of cultures, language barriers, political allegories, and social justice. These concepts create a novel that holds many layers beneath its words, causing endless interpretations of these layers. Barbara Kingsolver, the author of this well-crafted story, uses these themes to create the character of Adah Price, and her obsession with one thing: balance. Adah strives to achieve balance: a state of equality with her psychological, physical, and familial state, to which she successfully achieves by accepting the positives and negatives of the current state of each.