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Rachel Price Character Analysis

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Rachel Price is a beautiful young girl who joins her family on a one year mission trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo. She is a girl who likes herself a little too much. She is completely vain and self-conscious. Rachel is constantly worried about her appearance, as most teenage girls are in the United States. She brings along with her a mirror just to keep in touch with herself. Her vanity makes it hard for her to connect to the people of the Congo. In the Republic of Congo, the natives are dressed in whatever they can get or make. Rachel does not see the difference. In The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver, Rachel Price experiences ? which prevent her from being able to learn some lessons in the Congo and cause her to be physically …show more content…

She is described to have, “sapphire-blue eyes, white eyelashes, and platinum hair that falls to her waist.” (47) There is no doubt she is viewed as a beautiful young girl by the Congolese and there is no doubt why her sisters are jealous of her. The Congo people literally would pull on her hair just because they needed to know it was real hair. Now Rachel looked at the Congo people with a bit more judgement and wonderment than they did. One of the first things that the Price family noticed is that the natives are not put together. Some of them are missing limbs, such as, Mama Mwanza who is missing both of her legs and is forced to walk with her hands and arms. Ruth May writes, “Mama Mwanza’s legs didn’t burn all the way off...She has to scoot on her hands. Her hand bottoms look like feet bottoms, only with fingers.” (51) Rachel has never seen something like this before because in Georgia most people probably have all four of their limbs. Her closed mindedness causes her to quickly judge the Congolese even though they can make it through their everyday life just as well as Rachel can. It has become dangerous that she looks at them this way because she does not realize how lucky she is compared to them. The people in Kilanga quite literally can not compare to Rachel’s body image. In no literal terms, the people of Africa have way less and are put at a disadvantage compared to white people, but still make do. Rachel could not see

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