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Essay on The Language of African Literature '
Essay about african language and culture
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More handpicked essays just for you.
Essay on The Language of African Literature '
Essay about african language and culture
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
In Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, Adah’s birds eye view of the world and descriptive voice brings a different view to the events that occur in the Congo. Her character demonstrates this through her genuine compassion towards the Congolese women and by saying that her father’s assessment of the women was illogical through her diction and point of view. Adah’s attitude towards the Congolese women is shown to be compassionate through her diction when describing the mourning women. She used words like “why, why, why” and “crawled” to demonstrate the women's broken hearts. Unlike her father she viewed the women in a state of loss and grief while her father saw them as the culprits behind the childrens death.
Her family, as she realizes the people they truly are, also change her thought process and mindset from when they lived back home in Georgia. As the Congo becomes their home, moral lessons were taught until the day the Price family departs from the Congo, but not all of them. Leah Price was introduced as a fourteen year old girl who is very intelligent and who idealizes her father, a godly man whose rules are stricter than most. The family is departing from Bethlehem, Georgia on a mission trip to Africa for a year with not much from home. Prior to the touchdown in the Congo, Kingsolver helps the reader understand Leah’s character by showing how she describes herself as the favorite and the smartest of the four girls.
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.
An investigation took place, led by the Medical Board of California, on the doctors who saw Nadya during her pregnancy. It turns out that Nadya created all of her fourteen children with in vitro fertilization while she was unemployed. In this case study I feel like there are many ethical dilemmas that need to be addressed. I believe that the first problem we encounter is the physician who implanted the embryos.
Barbara Kingsolver’s novel, The Poisonwood Bible, follows the story of the four Price daughters and their mother in the Congo. The Prices are originally from the southern United States, a much different place than where they now find themselves. Throughout the novel, Kingsolver uses the differences between these two countries and what they represent to enhance the meaning of the work. The Congo and the United States have many physical and cultural differences that appear throughout the entirety of the novel.
In the novel, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbra Kingsolver, poetry is continuously used to illustrate Adah’s character. Adah Price is the one character that always appears as though she does not belong. During her childhood while her family lived in Africa, she did not speak, and also was born with hemiplegia, which caused her to walk with a terrible limp. She was created to be very analytical, intelligent, and extremely outside the box. Her habits from when she was younger, such as reading and thinking backwards, can directly relate to her disability and is seen as her way of handling how it feels to be so different from those around her.
A Poisonwood Bible 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.
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 closing chapter describes the Price women returning to Africa many years later as group. The significance of this final chapter is marked by the narration of the deceased Ruth May, who though she is not alive, has came to a spiritual reassessment of her own. Ruth May, who seems to have encountered the worst trial of Africa, death, comes to one of the most preeminent reconciliations of any of the characters. Ruth May offers her mother advice stating, “you can still hold on but forgive, forgive and give for long as long as we both shall live I forgive you” (pg. 543). Orleanna, like Leah, deviated from the ways of Nathan Price after succumbing to the guilt of complying with of his overbearing and disrespectful actions towards the Congolese.
Adah felt that she wasn’t a freak unlike how she felt back home because so many people in the Congo had missing limbs and handicaps so no one looked at her as if she was so different, besides the color of her skin. She was also very affected by the physical surroundings one night when there was a large swarm of ants on the village and there was no way she was able to save herself from almost being trampled to death, that was when she finally realised that she truly cared about her life. This lead her to becoming a doctor in the future and putting her intelligence to the test and finding a cure for her disease and overcoming her limp.. In Orleanna’s case the physical surroundings (green mamba snakes) had taken her youngest daughter Ruth May from her and had affected her like nothing else in her life had. She was finally able to act for herself and her family once again.
Orleanna says, "To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know" (385). Adah says, about her mother, "... she constantly addresses the ground under her feet. Asking forgiveness. Owning, disowning, recanting, recharting a hateful course of events to make sense of her own complicity.
From Georgia to the Belgian Congo, a white southern missionary family during the late 1950’s moved to Africa with the hopes of exposing the native people to the Christian way of life. Throughout the novel, the Price family is met with many obstacles while trying to learn this new culture in which they were surrounded. Many of the obstacles were directly due to their ignorance of the country. A character in the novel, Leah Price, was faced with the challenge of following her father’s will but also assimilating to the people of Congo. Leah was the older twin, and a young, free-spirited, passionate girl who once worshipped her father and believed in his philosophy.
In the beginning of the novel, Leah is a young Christian, American girl who looks up to her father, Nathan Price. Leah looks up to her father, describing him as “having a heart as large as his hands. And his wisdom is great” (42). This shows how much respect Leah has for her father. She puts her father on a high pedestal as he “understands everything” (66).
This prominent incident has lead Adah to establish a clinical yet indifferent attitude towards relationships and this mindset persists throughout her entire life. This conviction is further reinforced by the “ant tide” incident in which Adah was deemed to be of lesser value to her mother Orleanna Price. Adah's distraught emotions are clearly felt as she states, “ help me”(305). Adah’s first words to her mother yet she was “left behind”(306). Her mother as everyone else has viewed Adah a lesser than those who are able body or whole.
The arrival of a new baby, especially the first always marks a new beginning for a mother. It comes with a lot of challenges more so if the mother is less knowledgeable about baby care. Take such as cleaning the baby for the first time, or feeding, it is not easy. The baby is still fragile and slippery and needs a special care. But if the mother is not ready for all these, or maybe, does not have any knowledge on what to do, the baby’s life might be endangered since the baby needs a special care which only the mother can give.