Barbara Kingsolver

Some have named Ray Bradbury “the uncrowned king of the science-fiction writers” because of his imagination and beautiful way of making Fahrenheit 451 come to life. The book Fahrenheit 451 is one of the first books to deal with a future society filled with people who have lost their thirst for knowledge and for whom literature is a thing of the past. The author mainly portrays this world from the point of view of Montag, a man who has discovered the power that knowledge contains and is coming to grips with the fact that it is outlawed. However, the reader also gets to see what life is like for one of the people content in living a life lacking in independent thought and imagination through his wife, Millie. Through the characterization of Mildred, and his use of figurative language in Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury warns that technology has the ability to hinder independent thoughts and ideas.

“I came to a clear conclusion, and it is a universal one: To live, to struggle, to be in love with life--in love with all life holds, joyful or sorrowful--is fulfillment. The fullness of life is open to all of us” (Betty Smith). Betty Smith, born as Elizabeth Lillian Wehner, grew up in Brooklyn, New York as the daughter of poor German immigrants. At the time, child labor was legal and Smith began work at the young age of fourteen to help support her family. Smith’s life in the slums and her experiences during the Great Depression greatly influenced her writing. Most of her novels depict families struggling to survive on a low income. Another idea Smith explores in her novels is what part women should take in the world. In Smith’s lifetime, women were granted the right to vote and other significant rights that many did not agree on. In her books she created strong female leads that defy the bubble women were placed in at the time. Smith’s novels became highly popular with many Americans because she depicted the struggles of life in poverty that many people could relate to. Betty Smith was one of the most influential writers of her time, and her works impacted American culture in several ways.

Having read, The Poisonwood Bible book, it was both fascinating and interesting. The author, Barbara Kingsolver, was quick with her diction and used quite a lot of figurative language. The objective of the book was to show the true meaning of Africa and show how it was difficult to convert the people of Africa to Christianity religion. The setting was present in Georgia, which later they traveled to a village called Kilanga in Congo, in which they started their journey. The main characters includes, Nathan Price who was the main character, his wife Orleanna Price, and their four daughters, Rachel, Leah, Adah, and Ruth May.

In Barbara Kingsolver’s work, The Poisonwood Bible, Nathan Price is a character which responds to injustice in some significant way. Out of all the other characters, Nathan is the one who responds the most to an act of injustice by going on a campaign halfway around the world to somehow repay his obligation to God. He plans to do this by spreading Christianity, or at least his version of Christianity, to the native people of the Congo. The whole reason for him doing this is that he believes being wounded and leaving battle right before the rest of his company dies is an act of injustice and feels as if though he should have died there with his men. Nathan feels like he is a failure and is guilty for not dying with his brothers on the battlefield.

he Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver focuses on both real life and fictional events and tells the story of the Price family’s experience in the Congo. Kingsolver makes good use of foreshadowing to dramatize the tragic incidents that occur in Africa. Orleanna Price is the most reliable narrator in the novel and is used to foreshadow future events and to explain various aspects of the past.

“That this little book may do something toward throwing light on the American slave system”, and that Frederick Douglass does in his eponymous autobiography. Douglass throws light by dispelling the myths of the slave system, which received support from all parts of society. To dispel these myths Douglass begins to construct an argument composed around a series of rhetorical appeals and devices. Douglass illustrates that slavery is dehumanizing, corrupting, and promotes Christian hypocrisy.

As a college student, Emily Vallowe wrote a literacy narrative with a play on words title: “Write or Wrong Identity.” In this work, she told the story of how she believed her confidence as a writer developed; however, she was becoming dubious as to her distinctiveness as an author. Although I have never been a self-proclaimed wordsmith as Ms. Vallowe obviously had been for years, I related to her journey. Not only did she grow up in Northern Virginia like I did, she never considered herself an inept writer—a possibility that I could not fathom about myself. Then, at some point, we both began to question our own ability and to question who we really were. I identified with her soul-shaking experience when she profoundly realized, “It is a strange feeling to grow up defining yourself as something when you don’t know if that something is actually true.” I struggled in an introductory composition course at Virginia State University (VSU), and after giving each assignment my all, still

In the novel, The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver, a missionary family travel to the African Congo during the 1960’s, in hopes of bringing enlightenment to the Congolese in terms of religion. The father, Nathan, believes wholeheartedly in his commitment, and this is ultimately his downfall when he fails to realize the damage that he is placing upon his family and onto the people living in Kilanga, and refuses to change the way he sees things. However, his wife, Orleanna, and her daughters, Rachel, Leah, Adah, and Ruth May, take the Congo in, and make the necessary changes in their lives, and they do this in order to survive with their new darkness that they are living in. Curiosity and acceptance help the ones with curious minds,

The title The Poisonwood Bible is very fitting. The poisonwood tree is described as “The tree that was plaguing us all to death” (29). Just as the painful, venomous and hazardous if mishandled poisonwood tree is, so is Nathan Price's theology. He mistranslates key words and therefore the biblical message doesn't make sense to the people to whom he preaches (73). He doesn’t take time to understand the people, he simply judges and criticizes their culture. Nathan publicly disgraces a woman during a service for her attire. He proceeds to proclaim, “Nakedness, and darkness of the soul!” (7). He causes more problems for the people rather than aiding them.

Taylor comes from a nontraditional family. She was raised by her mother, who worked long hours as a housekeeper to support Taylor and herself. Her father, Foster Greer, left her mother when he found out that her mother was pregnant. Her mother doesn 't mind that Foster left; in fact, she often tells Taylor that "trading Foster for [you] was the best deal this side of the Jackson Purchase." As Taylor matures and is exposed to horrible things that fathers can say and do to children, she feels quite lucky to have grown up without a father. The resiliency of Taylor 's mother and her commitment to Taylor, as well as her indifferent attitude toward men, represent Kingsolver 's feminist

The Poisonwood Bible explores multiple different meanings ranging from love and loyalty, to ignorance and political oppression. While it is a story of the journey of the Price family in the Congo, Kingsolver uses these narratives to draw a bigger picture of the geopolitics that are at play in the Congo. I think the overarching theme of the novel is ignorance and its opposite: empathy. We follow the journeys of ignorant characters such as Rachel and Nathan Price and are given a parallel with the journeys of Adah, Leah, and Orleanna. However Kingsolver showcases the realities of life here or beyond by the end of the novel where it is clear that none of the characters we met at the beginning would end up with lives that fulfilled all their dreams

Sometimes, personality can be perpetual. Even faced with the most adverse surroundings, a teenager’s character can remain virtually unaffected. Rachel Price, the eldest Price sister, experiences almost no change over the course of The Poisonwood Bible, written by Barbara Kingsolver. Characterized as an ignorant, superficial, “ditzy blonde”, Rachel makes no attempts to assimilate or adapt to the customs of Kilanga, frequently enjoying luxury and leisure at the expense of the villagers’ hard work. Rachel’s persona is perfectly captured in the nsongonya ants attack, where she simply decides to “stick out [her] elbows and raise up [her] feet,” and be carried in the stream of fleeing villagers, despite jabbing her elbows “very hard into the ribs” of the villagers carrying her (305).

It has often been said that once you spend enough time with someone and create a strong bond with them, you end up becoming very close and considering them family. What has also been said is that we find friendships when we need it most. As important as family is in real life, it is often shown that in literature, authors use this concept to offer a clear understanding on how close an individual can get to someone within months. Barbara Kingsolver demonstrates the importance of family through Taylor in her novel The Bean Trees, as she creates strong relationships on her way through life.

Barbara Walters’ career brings words such as “legendary”, “pioneering”, and “inspirational” to mind. She was more than just any other pretty person that was on a TV screen. “Walters was born September 25, 1929, and grew up in Boston, Massachusetts”(world book). From an early age, she had been surrounded by celebrities, many people say this attributed to her relaxed manner while she interviewed people. Her father, Louis Edward Walters, had opened a string of nightclubs called the Latin Quarter. “Walter’s spent a lot of time there, it was common for famous people to come in and out for a good time” (Lemann 1). “She became the first woman co-anchor of a network evening news program and earned roughly an unprecedented twelve million dollar salary.

In the scholarly article, Sam Weller: Ray Bradbury’s 180 on Fahrenheit 451, Sam Weller clarifies the controversial theme of censorship in Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Sam Weller begins by introducing Ray Bradbury and his first prominent novel, Fahrenheit 451. Weller describes the book as “the story of the near-future society” and categorizes alongside other dystopian literature such as Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984. The article sounded like any other analyses of the book, until the author made an unexpected statement: Sam Weller had personal relationship with Ray Bradbury.