The Poisonwood Bible Analysis

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.

on a person, in this case it’s Adah. The exile she had around her family and

Barbara Kingsolver’s novel, The Poisonwood Bible, is about a missionary family named the Prices who move from the U.S. state of Georgia to the village of Kilanga in the Belgian Congo. For the Price women, their previous identities consisted of their relationship to their American culture; once they are in Africa, that identity is forced to shift and adapt to the African culture. Homi Bhabha’s concept of “hybridity”, is defined as the result of the interactions of colonizers and colonized. Bhabba writes that colonizing cultures cannot alter a native culture without adapting characteristics themselves. The members of the Price family come into Africa bringing their own American ideologies with the goal to educate the native people, starting with

The title, The Poisonwood Bible, is an excellent title for the plot of this book. “Tata Jesus is bangala” (331), which has two different meaning because bangala means precious and also the poisonwood tree. Reverend Price says this phrase at the end of every sermon, but he mispronounces the word bangala so that it means poisonwood tree. So the locals think he is saying “Jesus is the poisonwood tree” instead of “Jesus is precious.” This makes the title very important because it makes the Congolese not want to know God because they think He is poisonwood. Nathan never realizes that he mispronounces these words, so his version of the Bible is poisonous to the locals because of all the mispronunciations.

Women have come a long way to fight for their representation. Before females were allowed to vote or work, they were viewed as homemakers; they were their husbands’chattels. Females were considered vulnerable and incapable of intelligence. Should women have to depend on the man of the family to represent their needs? Children of patriarchal societies should have the ability to learn even in college, whether they are male or female. In The Poisonwood Bible, the four daughters of the tyrannical Nathan Price are forced into a strong dictatorship and must depend on their father to take care of them. Kingsolver writes from the perspective of the Price girls to show how they feel the lack of equality to men in America and in the Congo. The girls

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,

Foreshadowing is a literary device many authors use to hint at future events containing influential and thematic material; and authors tend to introduce their major themes through foreshadowing in opening scenes or a prologue. Barbra Kingsolver’s novel, The Poisonwood Bible, follows this very trend. Orleanna Price, in the first chapter, describes her burden of guilt toward choices she has made and the death of the youngest of her four daughters, Ruth May. Throughout the story, you discover the guilt within each of the five women: Adah, Leah, Rachel, Orleanna, and Ruth May. Due to supporting implications within the opening chapter of The Poisonwood Bible, with continuing evidence throughout the novel, it can be concluded that guiltiness is a motif.

A common question one ponders while reading the Poisonwood Bible is, why is Nathan not given a perspective in the narrative. More appropriately, the question should be whether Nathan needs a perspective, and the answer is not only no, but by reading the book in the Orleanna’s perspective, we gain more insight into Nathan than we would have if we were reading in his narrative.

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

When describing Patrice Lumumba, Barbara Kingsolver uses complementary wording that makes the reader like him, or at least respect him. The Belgian doctor puts a cast on Ruth May’s arm on page 149 and calls Lumumba “the new soul of Africa”, which introduces Lumumba to the reader as a positive idea. When Leah sees Lumumba on pages 221-222, he’s described as “a thin, distinguished man” and that “when he stood to speak, everyone’s mouth shut... Even the birds seemed taken aback”. This portrayal makes him appear smart and scholarly and the reader is partial to him. His way of speaking is told to us by Leah to be “rising in such a way that heaven and anger get mingled together”, which presents the reader with Lumumba’s passion and how well-spoken he is.

Barbara Kingsolver does a wonderful job with incorporating literary devices into her novel. These literary devices help the reader to experience the words written on the page and it allows the reader to think that they are actually living the story. One major literary device that Kingsolver uses throughout the book to show her ideas to the reader is imagery. “Her dark hair is tied in a ragged lace handkerchief, and her curved jawbone is lit with large, false-pearl earrings, as if these headlamps from another world might show the way.” (pg 5) When I hear these words, I am able to paint a picture inside of my head of Orleana Price. I am able to imagine what she looks like and this imagery provides the reader with direct characterization of

A theme most commonly used in literature. It has a way of bringing change either to a character or environment that no other theme can achieve, most likely for the worst. We see cruelty everywhere in life and pieces of literature it can sometimes be hard to see when it 's right in front of our face. I had a hard time figuring this out while reading The Poisonwood Bible and Things Fall Apart. It wasn 't hard for me to see what they were doing was wrong, but more of why they were. What made them so cruel? Why 'd they have to treat people the way they did? Nathan price in, The Poisonwood Bible, develops this theme of cruelty through his arrogance and stubbornness. Okonkwo from, Things fall apart, was the same. When we focus on them in the books

Orleanna price is a proud, strong, and hard working mother trying to keep her family together but not afraid to tell how she feels.”You can curse the dead or pray for them, but don 't expect them to do a thing for you. They 're far too interested in watching us, to see what in heaven 's name we will do next.” (4.Prologue.24) The Poisonwood Bible has many biblical references the

The Kikongo word nommo means “word”, it is the “force that makes things live as what they are” (Kingsolver, 209) . This is significant because this allows Adah to understand herself and her twin sister, Leah. Although they are twin sisters that have come from the same place they are in fact very different. The idea that a name creates one’s existence helps her understand why she and her twin sister are so different.  Muntu can mean man [as in mankind] or people which makes no special difference between living people, dead people, and children not yet born. In other words, it’s a special kind of life force that makes us, us. With the word nommo something is not considered “alive” until it has been named, not even a child. This could be referred back to the bible in the story of Genesis, where Adam names the animals. Imagine that’s how the Price family must have felt in moving to the Congo “In the beginning we were just about in the same boat as Adam and Eve. We had to learn the names of everything” (Kingsolver, )  which was difficult to become accustomed to.

Women’s place and role in the society is something that has been discussed and changed over time. Should their rights be the same as men’s? Should they be superior? Inferior? The world faces a dilemma on weather they should be or not equal as men. It seems like we arrived at a deadlock, where no progress can be made about it. We still have feminists fighting for their rights, but I doesn’t seem to work that much, although they have much more rights than they had fifty years ago. But the question that remains is: what is women’s and men’s role?