...The Poisonwood Bible This summer I read the book The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. I chose this book because I wanted to learn about one of the many different cultures of Africa. The book is about adapting to a different lifestyle and also changing your ways as the world around you changes too. The book is also about religion and one of the main storylines is about trying to teach Christianity to the people in the Congo Basin. The Poisonwood Bible starts off with a baptist preacher named Nathan Price taking his family from to the village of Kilanga in the Belgian Congo in order to spread Christianity. Nathan’s family consisted of his wife Orleanna, and his daughters Leah, Adah, Ruth May, and Rachel. The mother and daughters except for quickly learn that they should not be living there. However, Leah starts to fall in love with a schoolteacher there named Anatole and starts to embrace the Congo. “It’s a heavenly paradise in the Congo, and sometimes I want to live here forever." (104). Nathan ignores obvious signs of his church failing and the need to leave as the upcoming election will declare the Congo apart from Belgium. Eventually their servant Nelson thinks that someone is trying to kill...
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...Character Analysis Summer Reading In my novels, such as, The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver, each character goes through a series of changes, that helps the characters develop mentally, and physically within their environments. The Poisonwood Bible takes place in the 1950’s all the way to the late 1970’s, and is about a preacher’s family moving to the Congo to help spread the word of God to the Congolese people. After the Price family (the preacher’s family), moves to the Congo from the American southwest, they are shocked by how developed the country and village is. Soon enough, the family quickly learns that they can live an ecstatic life without electricity, plumbing, and so much more that people in America and other first world...
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...In Barbara Kingsolver's novel, The Poisonwood Bible, one can obviously see support for Edith Wharton's claim that "lighting up episodes" serve as windows into the significance of a work. Here, Kingsolver uses the passing of most youthful girl Ruth May as a window into the subject of blame and its place on the planet. Through the family's responses to her passing and Ruth May's message to her mom, Kingsolver builds up the subject of blame and obligation. It is fascinating to take note of the diverse responses and ways of dealing with stress every relative utilizes in reacting to Ruth May's passing. Her dad promptly says "She wasn't purified through water," and spends whatever is left of his life going insane in the wilderness attempting to...
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...The Poisonwood Bible is definitely a universal parable of enlightenment rather than a profoundly American parable of Enlightenment or a story about the Congo. Although the five narratives within this novel are from the perspective of Americans, the messages that transpire are themes that circulate in various cultures despite the difference in location. Like people before them and after them, the Prices go through a series of issues within the family and outside the family that result in tremendous changes for the future. The problems that arise within the Congo itself, illustrate the struggle of independence. The five girls eventually learn to let go of the past in order to create a better and brighter future for themselves. By escaping the destructive...
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...locals to a new religion takes immense dedication and patience. Nathan Price an opinionated, evangelical, Baptist from the town of Bethlehem, Georgia brings his family of six to do just that. Nathan, his wife, and his four daughters are located at Kilanga an isolated village in Congo. Nathan is very confident that he will convert all the locals in the name of God but he is forgetting something, Nathan is forgetting that he is in a place where not just the language is different but also the inherent perspectives. The story of The Poisonwood Bible starts with the frantic commotion of the Price family after they have just been told that there is a wieght limit for their bags which are overflowing with seemingly essential pieces of their once known life. It seems as if the reason the Price family insisted on stuffing cake mixes, books and other western novelties was not to have them in case but to have some connection with the world they grew up in. For Orleanna, Nathan's wife, her special bone-china platter with the blue flowers has a “protective power of primitive amulets and charms, that is an assurance that the arrow, the flames, and the flood are not as brutal as they seem.” (The Hero with a Thousand Faces, p107)....
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...Although the novels The Poisonwood Bible, Heart of Darkness, and Things Fall Apart, written by Barbara Kingsolver, Joseph Conrad, and Chinua Achebe, respectively, have related themes, settings, and historical contexts, differing approaches to narration and description render each book highly distinct. It should be noted that some elements of setting are not shared, Heart of Darkness and Things Fall Apart take place during the early waves of colonialism, around the year 1900, while The Poisonwood Bible is set more than half a century later. Additionally, Things Fall Apart is set in what is now Nigeria, while both other novels occur in the Congo. However, these differences are insignificant compared to the effects of the vastly different attitudes of the narrators. Conrad’s Marlow presents a European perspective of Africa, which while...
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...The Impact of Childhood The Poisonwood Bible ,by Barbara Kingswood, is a remarkable tale that expresses the several political transitions in the Congo through the eyes of a Baptist family. Nathan Price , a cruel and ironically a fiercely religious man, is the head of this family followed by his once effervescent wife, Orleanna, and his four daughters; Rachel the eldest and vainest, Leah, a tomboy who strives for her father's attention, Adah, Leah's disabled and genius twin, and Ruth May the youngest of the family. In the midst of several familial struggles, the conflict between Adah and Nathan Price is one that greatly contributes to the interpretation of this piece. At their birth, Adah and Leah appear to be a healthy set of twins. However, as time passes it is discovered that the left side of Adah's body is paralyzed because of a lack of nutrients in the womb. Due to her condition, she spends her detached from the world and maintains a cynical perspective at a young age which can be seen in her words concerning her twin," But I am a lame gallimaufry and she remains perfect" ( Kingsolver 34). Over the course of her early life, she maintains her position as an observer in the life of others and absorbs much information. Clearly, Adah's disability greatly affects her outlook on life....
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...The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver, is a book that involves many characters and their views on the issues they face. The main female characters, Orleanna, Leah, Adah, Rachel, and Ruth May all are telling the same story, but from different perspectives and unique interpretations of certain events. The events of the story deal with guilt, grief, forgiveness, the struggle for survival, and much more. It involved many parallels to different situations, mainly the Congo Crisis as a whole. Through the characters and events of the story, the reader gets an understanding of the issues of the Congo and is able to compare the situations faced between the characters to the main issue. To add, the novel is considered to be a frame story. A frame...
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...In the modern day, America faces constant problems of inequality, yet we are conditioned to have a notion of superiority to other countries with similar problems. This ultimately leads the American people to become more ignorant. Similarly, The Poisonwood Bible, a novel by Barbara Kingsolver, introduces characters that are forced to deal with their ignorance in the Congo, as well as reflect on their inner self. The main theme Kingsolver touches upon are the ideas of indifference and ignorance, and whether or not it is part of the human conscience to escape. Typically, Americans are not aware of the many atrocities that occur in other countries. Even when they recognize these unjust acts, they tend to look down on these poor countries in which...
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...“The Congolese sense of balance is spectacular” and that, too, becomes true for the five female narrators in Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible (Kingsolver 107). The intricate and diverse nature of the women’s relativity creates a novel that consists of a fickle balancing act. The five narrators are similar to the year rings on trees as they experience daily life, but then grow from the previous narrator’s perspective, or in the case of trees, the previous years. A sturdy thematic structure is created by the narrators, Ruth May, Leah, Rachel, Adah, and Orleanna Price, that supports a complex storyline made of different observations of the Congo. In The Poisonwood Bible, the quintfecta of narrators, a perfect group of five, gives structure...
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...is to support a man, bear children, and housekeeping duties. This is how it is and has been for millennia 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...
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...In Barbara Kingsolver's novel “The Poisonwood Bible,” multiple members of the Price family experience a moment of exile throughout the novel. Orleanna Price is one member of the family who experiences physical and mental, as well as emotional exiling due to the hardships she had to face. Orleanna proves that exile both alienates and enriches her life through the amount of hardships she and her family face by describing how through the bad experiences handed to her she is able to learn to leave and live for herself, while also describing how through the experiences her family was ultimately torn apart. In the beginning of the novel Orleanna describes her experience of the forced transition to the Congo from their life in America by stating “Maybe...
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...The Poisonwood Bible Journal Responses The reason that Orleanna describes the forest scene so detailed is because we, the viewers, can almost perfectly picture said scene. It shows us how beautiful the nature is, and what Orleanna sees through her eyes. It shows us an inside to a little bit of her personality, and how she views the world. Focus on the positive and disregard the negative. She talks in past tense because she hasn't grasped on the whole concept of the thing yet I think. While the girls have taken their experience and learned from it, so they speak of it in the present to represent the importance. I believe the names are significant because they're not brand new. They're names from the “olden times” so it adds...
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...The Poisonwood Bible contained several symbols, but perhaps the biggest symbol is a parrot left to the Price family by Brother Fowles, Kilanga's previous missionary. This parrot, Methuselah, who seemed to just be a pet in the story, ends up being a major symbol for the Republic of Congo, both of whom had been kept "caged" and had little control over themselves. In the book, the parrot causes some trouble amongst the Price family by mimicking profanity expressed by Orleanna. After Methuselah repeated some more profane language, Nathan decided it would be best to set the parrot free. This troublesome behavior can be compared to the actions of the citizens of the Congo trying to gain freedom from their owners, the Belgians. When the Price family...
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...The Deep Roots of Colonization in The Poisonwood Bible. In The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver explores the implications of colonial oppression on a colonized population. The story of the Price family serves as a potent political allegory for the broader effects of colonialism on the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Kingsolver uses the tool of allegory to explore broader political issues on a more personal level by giving the reader a direct, first-person insight into her characters’ point of view. This choice of narration is paramount to her message, giving the reader multiple lenses through which to view the events of the book. Each lens delves into colonial oppression in a unique way, allowing for the complexity of the topic to shine...
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