In their respective works, Barbara Kingsolver and Joseph Conrad give to the reader their main idea, through the internal reassessment of their characters. Though written 100 years apart Kingsolver’s Poisonwood Bible and Conrad’s Heart of Darkness both include the theme of a transformation of a major character. To show this theme Kingsolver uses her character of Leah Price, while Conrad uses his character of Charles Marlow.
The first way that Kingsolver and Conrad show this theme is through Leah and Marlow’s turning away from the “patriarchal” figures in their life. In The Poisonwood Bible Leah’s patriarch is her father Nathan Price. Through much of the novel Leah looks up to Nathan as the ultimate moral and spiritual authority in her life,
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In The Poisonwood Bible Leah first sees the whites exploitation of the Congolese when she visits the Underdowns in Leopoldville. She observes that “Leopoldville is a nice little town of dandy houses with porches and ... surrounding it, for miles and miles, nothing but dusty run-down shacks for the Congolese” (Kingsolver 72). Leah realizes in this moment just how the whites exploit the Congolese for their own gain while giving nothing back to the land that made them rich. Upon seeing this Leah changes her entire perspective of the imperialist invasion of the Congo, eventually leading to her living a life for the betterment of the Congo. Similarly in Heart of Darkness, upon seeing the exploitation of the Congolese natives, instead of pride about the European superiority, Marlow is filled with profound disgust. “ It was the same kind of ominous voice; but these man could by no stretch of imagination be called enemies” (Conrad 19). Upon seeing the beaten and broken “enemies” Marlow realizes that the European subjugation is not all that it is cracked up to be. It causes serious pain and suffering for the natives of the country, which is particularly shocking to Marlow as Europe claims to be so elevated and