Adah Price is the disabled daughter of Nathan and Orleanna Price in the novel “The Poisonwood Bible”, she knows the benefits and struggles from the form of exile she experiences. Adah has dealt with alienation from the moment she was born and her disability was first discovered.
Throughout the novel we witness Adah’s disorder and how it affects her and her family's life both in positive and negative ways. With all of Adah’s struggles we see her exiled from her family, her home, and even herself.
Adah is exiled from her family because of her disability; she limps and isolates herself from the world and everyone around her. Her family doesn’t understand Adah and can’t seem to see past her appearance; they underestimate her intelligence when really
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Adah's family marginalizes her,” (Fox) this quote shows why Adah feels so alienated even from her own mother.
Adah may have had many struggles, but all the time she spent alone or not speaking she was observing and learning in her own way. “Adah's decision to "keep [her] thoughts to [herself]," substituting writing for speech, frees her to find her own ways of thinking and seeing, (34)” (Koza) this was the enriching part of her alienation; Adah, being so different gave the novel a new point of view that the other Prices didn’t have. She was an outsider silently and constantly observing her surroundings but never actually feeling like a part of it.
A large part of “The Poisonwood Bible” is the effect isolation can have on a person, in this case it’s Adah. The exile she had around her family and community eventually made her exile herself. In the end you can see that if
Adah had not had this exile in her life she might not have gained the knowledge and success that would allow her to speak, go to medical school, and overcome her disability. In the end she was capable of reaching her full
Pritchett 5 potential which makes the alienation she had always felt to be an overall
enriching