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Analysis Of The Poisonwood Bible By Barbara Kingsolver

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The Poisonwood Bible is a novel by Barbara Kingsolver. It is set in the late 1950’s in a small village in the Congo where a fanatically religious man named Nathan Price forced his wife and four children on a mission trip to bring the word of God to the villagers of Kilanga. The story is told from the points of view of the Price women: The matriarch Orleanna, and her daughters Rachel, Leah, Adah, and Ruth May. While there are some issues with the writing style of The Poisonwood Bible, it tackles tough topics such as racial, gender, religious, and political inequality and tension through the voices of these five women in a completely real and relatable way that makes it a book not easily forgotten. An issue with The Poisonwood Bible was its …show more content…

They look up from their lives, woman and animal, amazed to find themselves in the same place… Without taking his eyes from her, he twitches a little at the knee, then the shoulder, where a fly devils him. Finally he surrenders his surprise, looks away, and drinks… It lasted just a moment, whatever that is. One held breath? An ant’s afternoon? It was brief, I can promise that much, for although it’s been many years now since my children ruled my life, a mother recalls the measure of the silences. I never had more than five minutes’ peace unbroken. I was that woman on the stream bank, of course. Orleanna Price, Southern Baptist by marriage, mother of children living and dead. That one time and no other the okapi came to the stream, and I was the only one to see it. (Kingsolver 1.1.2-5) The Poisonwood Bible did have its strong points though. The narrators give the reader a first hand look at the way religion, race, and gender are viewed in different parts of the world; and how those differences are processed by outsiders. I admire the way the author captured the different views people from more privileged countries have on foreign lands through her narrators. The Price women each have their own experiences and perspectives that give them each a unique view of the situation. Adah describes it best in one of the most powerful quotes to come from the

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