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Adah In Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible

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The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver depicts Adah Price as the forsaken child in a foreign land. Already an outcast in her own family due to her brain deformity, her exposure to the Congo differs from the rest. From “A. D. A. H. Adah” the “ Crooked one” to able body Adah. Her Journey is a sight to behold form the light into the darkness from their somewhere in between and it all begins when the price family goes to the congo. Forced from her home in Bethlehem Georgia by her father and his Holy Mission to bring the “all powerful” Jesus Christ to the savage and native lands of the Congo, Adah’s journey begins. The rift at birth “She grew strong as I grew weak. (Yes! Jesus loves me!) And so it came to pass, in the Eden of our mother's …show more content…

This prominent incident has lead Adah to establish a clinical yet indifferent attitude towards relationships and this mindset persists throughout her entire life. This conviction is further reinforced by the “ant tide” incident in which Adah was deemed to be of lesser value to her mother Orleanna Price. Adah's distraught emotions are clearly felt as she states, “ help me”(305). Adah’s first words to her mother yet she was “left behind”(306). Her mother as everyone else has viewed Adah a lesser than those who are able body or whole. Unlike others, Adah views herself as whole. Yet she struggles to accept in the years to come why she made it out of the Congo, but unfortunately, no answers came. However, hatred and resentment never fade.
Adah bares anger and resents those who have done her wrong: her mother, her father, her sisters. Though time has dulled this hatred, she does not let go, for it is the only link to her former self. She has seen good and she has seen evil, all living beings have the right to die and in death there is life and in life there is death. “ She is A.D.A.H. Adah”. Adah’s journey adds a darker hue to the book and adds emphasis to the overall effect of change over time. Nothing remains constant as all things change; this is the universal law of change portrayed through The Poisonwood

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