...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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...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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...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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...five Price women enter the Congo with certain things: a stainless-steel thimble, materialistic tendencies, Betty Crocker cake mixes, white privilege, ivory hand mirrors, and stereotypical American ignorance, to name a few. However, the things they leave with are significantly different. They took away a sense of enlightenment, worldly balance, guilt, and shame from Africa, and, most importantly, the loss of Ruth May. Throughout The Posionwood Bible, the Congo molded the Price women, it shaped their souls. Orleanna, Rachel, Leah, Adah, and Ruth May were all affected by their time in the Congo, varying greatly in their final philosophical perceptions— they lie on a spectrum of apathy to deliberating guilt, with cynicism, realism, and balance speckled throughout the...
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...In The Posionwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver examines the interactions between differing mindsets of the Price Family. Nathan, the abusive patriarch of the Price family, purposely sacrifices his family for his own salvation. Nathan Price beleaguered and demeaned his family especially his wife, Orleanna, because of his own guilt over his failures during WW2. Nathan feels like in God’s eyes he is despised and labels himself as a coward, to counteract his faults by devoting his life to missionary work. As his first act of sacrificing his family, Nathan forces his family to move to the dangerous jungles of the Congo for his own mission to save the souls of the Congolese and rid himself of his own cowardice. However his devotion to God is not to save others but to feed his own ego and...
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...The significance of a title is often hidden within the pages of a novel. The true meaning of the title: The Poisonwood Bible, is not revealed until further inspection into the novel. The reader learns that the translation of the word “bangala”, often used by Nathan Price to describe Jesus, can be used to mean “precious,” but also translates to the name for a dangerous plant in the Congo, poisonwood. The author reveals this truth throughout the novel by using contrast and point of view. The author utilizes contrast to present differences between the beliefs of Nathan Price and the locals of the Congo quite often. Nathan Price enters the Congo with a drive to present Christianity to the locals as a need rather than a want. With stubborn and demanding behavior, Reverend Price attempts to manipulate the Congolese into...
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...Throughout the novel The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver Leah Price, a key character and narrative voice, evolved and progressed through her tone, which changed from optimistic to sadness to anger, and also through her diction, which shifted from using admirable things to describe her father to using words of hatred and resentment towards him, and lastly through her point of view on religion, which changed from being a faithful Christian to truly questioning her belief in God. Leah Price grows all through the novel and the readers get to witness her transformation from a child at fourteen to an adult woman. She changes her country, then her religion, and then her respect and admiration for her father. Leah lost everything all the while gaining...
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...In the book The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver certain events that happen in the Congo reveal true morals behind actions and relationships. In times of distress, people’s true self’s come out, and often it is another side that may not have been visible before. During the key event of Ruth Mays death, Kingsolver shows how the family members react and change in the event of a loss. The loss that is shown in book four is Ruth Mays death who dies of a green Mamba snake, but when going to check on the ashes her sisters and Nelson put around to protect him from the evil. The death of a child can reveal the characteristics of someone through how they react. The death of Ruth May was an event that changed the lives of the Price family but...
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...Looking at literature that’s based off post-colonialism, it’s hard to find a point of view that is unbiased and lacking western Orientalism that taints writings about less civilized cultures. Two books paint both sides of the equation: Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible. In both novels, the author depicts a character going through both an internal and external struggle dealing with exile. The authors conclude in different variations that it’s after the alienation, or exile, of a character that lets black African Orientalism to cause change, not in the character’s enlightenment, but to change them into a sacrificial character for others’ enrichment. In these novels, it reveals how Africa faces...
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...paragraph of the page. I chose the article because it was a foreshadow to the sisters, described the rest of the book, mainly on the Congo, and by the anxiousness of Leah to really experience what she was just told about the Congo. The Underdown family was basically in charge of the mission, and told the Prices, what to expect in the Congo, Leah’s feelings seemed to add up intensely when the Underdown family was mentioning every good and bad thing in the Congo. It was almost surreal to me that what the Underdown family had said the Congo would be like, it was, it was definitely full of jungle flowers, and wild beasts. Adah, Leah’s twin even encountered a wild beast, almost. As I just mentioned what was foreshadowed in the novel, The Poisonwood Bible, was a description, almost of the Congo mission in a general summary, it consisted of pretty flowers, wild beasts, even doctors coming once a week, but that was because of the every five day market rule. Anyways, going into a slump was definitely foreshadowed right, I think when the family fell into a dump, it was when father missed the opportunity to go back home, when the Underdown family did. The anxiousness of Leah was showed when Leah said “My heart pounded…” I definitely felt Leah at this point because I could only imagine myself being having to live in the Congos and being told about all of the good and all of the bad she will encounter. As I found similes everywhere in the book, in the one passage I choose to write about, there...
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...The Poisonwood Bible highlights the contrast between a family of Baptist missionaries from the southern United States and the people of the Kilanga village in the Congo beginning in the 1950s. As I am interested in joining the Peace Corps after college as a teacher and have taken both World History courses in addition to courses on the cultures of French-speaking Africa, I was horrified yet intrigued by the insistence of the patriarch of the missionary family, Nathan, to impose his beliefs on the traditional people of Kilanga. No matter how noble Nathan may have thought his efforts were, the religious practices that he wanted to enforce were not logical or helpful to the Congolese society. Nathan wanted to change the beliefs of the Congolese...
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...to shove, a mother takes care of her children from the bottom up” (Kingsolver, 444). Leah set a moral code for herself: family comes first. One recurring example of this is how Leah uses all her energy to take care of her children and always does what’s best for them, “I get out of bed and put on my shoes and force myself to take care of the children” (Kingsolver, 466). Anatole taught Leah to always stay true to yourself and be loyal, “Be kind to yourself” (Kingsolver, 474). Anatole went to jail several times, claiming that he will always fight for his country’s independence, “He’d rather be here, even in prison, than turning his back on an outrage”, “Anatole is in prison. Maybe for the last time”. Barbara Kingsolver’s novel, “The Poisonwood bible”, features a prominent young woman who leaves “home” and demonstrates how her displacement transforms the character, and ultimately changes the Congo and its internal relations with the rest of Africa. Throughout her journey she recurrently establishes a new “home” (dependent relationship) and abandons her previous “home”. Towards the end of her journey, when she finally finds her true self, she is the one in which others depend on. This correlates to how the Congo finally achieved independence and became the symbol for how the rest of Africa should fight for their independence. Leah’s personality transforms as she adapts and leaves her numerous “homes”. Some adaptations are for the better while others aren’t necessarily so beneficial...
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...Book Three • What is the significance of the Kikongo word nommo and its attendant concepts of being and naming? How do the Price sisters’ Christian names and their acquired Kikongo names reflect personalities and behavior? The word nommo means pretty much your name. In the Kikongo, they have named things because that is their name. A further explanation as explained in the book, is “you wouldn’t name a machete a human because if so it might raise up and start dancing around.” Some of the people, for example Rachel, received their name because of their name’s role in the bible. Rachel was one of the first named from creation in the bible like how she is the oldest in the family and first named. Also in many parts of the Bible, Rachel was...
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...“ And, after all, our surroundings influence our lives and characters as much as fate, destiny, or any supernatural agency,” Pauline Hopkins, Contending Forces. Starting off in the non realistic novel, a family, the Price’s, move to the Belgian Congo from Bethlehem, Georgia, in 1959 due to missionary. The Poisonwood Bible is based off of being told from different perspectives of how the life is living in the Congo. Mainly from the mother and her four children point of view. A character within the novel has been shaped by cultural, physical, or geographical surroundings. Development for someone can occur in different ways. It is possible that your surroundings can make who you truly are. Through trials and tribulations for this specific character,...
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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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