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Allegory In The Poisonwood Bible

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Recommended: The Influence Of African Religion

Jordan McCray Ms.Given Honors English 11 05 February 2018 Response #3 As humans we are constantly reinventing ourselves and in turn changing the stories that make us. We mull over details that are arguably trivial and do not necessarily change the outcome but make us feel better in the long run. Orleanna and the Price girls are trying to make some sense of their journey in the Congo and inevitably are running through the events over and over, especially Orleanna. Adah alludes to the fact that her mother, Orleanna, finds herself “owning, disowning, recanting and recharting” the events that took place after her husband moved her and her children to congo (Kingsolver 492). That maybe why her chapters are the only ones written in past tense. Orleanna …show more content…

The Congo and the Price women are both for independence from authoritarian white men, only difference being the Price women are looking for freedom from their domineering husband and father, while the Congo is looking for freedom from tyrannical men who run them. Religious allegory is also seen through simple elements such as sin, redemption and forgiveness. Though it is fiction, The Poisonwood Bible, is historically accurate. Though Orleanna, Rachel, Leah, Adah and Ruth May are not real people, real missionaries did reside in the Congo during Patrice Lumumba’s short reign and well into Mobutu Sese Seko’s reign. Kingsolver concludes that everyone in The Poisonwood Bible is complicit. Though to some degree Kingsolver’s conclusion is understandable, it is harsh. Everyone has fashioned their own sins in one way or another but they were not all extreme. Certainly Orleanna and Nathan were complicit but to call their children complicit when many of their decisions were made for them is not right. Orleanna is complicit because as a grown woman she should have spoken up knowing her husband was in the wrong and doing wrong but she did not. Nathan is naturally incredulous and believes he knows so much better than the villagers because he is a white american, he does not stand up for the injustices he knows the congolese are facing but instead tries to continue to push his Christianity down their throats, even though it is doing no one any

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Rachel Price is the epitome of a classic material girl; when tasked with bringing objects from home, she picks her faux-ivory hand mirror to bring with her. This mirror, although minute in the story line, is a large symbol in the Price’s journey in the Congo; Rachel uses it to hang on to a past life, and then the vanity she craves brings a new perspective to the natives. The mirror allows the Price girls, specifically Rachel, to hang on to a life she used to know -- one of fancy, white America. She uses it “...while she lay in the hammock examining her pores with the hand mirror” (Kingsolver 139), as this is the most reasonable thing to do in the Congo.

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Orleanna’s third exile: Her family scattering after Ruth May’s death. Orleanna doesn’t see Leah or Rachel much after this point. Ruth May symbolizes Lumumba rather than an entire country; His loss was felt as heavily by the Congo as Ruth May’s death was felt by the Price family. When Ruth May died Orlanna began her return to America but only got there with one of her daughters. Keeping in mind that Orleanna represents the Congo, this brings up Rachel’s statement about how “ ... if you think about it, the Africans are running all over America right now, having riots for their civil rights and predominating the sports and popular-music industries.”

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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.

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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

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Shauna Reed Wetherington P.2 AP Literature 12/07/2016 Rachel Price: The Poisonwood Bible The best way to answer the question "Who is Rachel Price, and what is she like"? Is to simply say that She is a White Christian girl living in the Congo. She loves herself, her hair, and herself.

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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,

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Spending a generous amount of time in the heart of the African Congo is bound to change an American family. After spending over a year in the small Congolese village of Kilango, the Price family comes to terms with the fact that they cannot leave Africa without being changed by it, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. Living in the Congo at a time when their race was doing all in their power to Westernize Africa, the Price women left Kilanga feeling immense guilt for being a part of this unjust manipulation of the African people. By the end of the novel, all of the Price women leave with the task of reconciling the wrongs they have committed and learning to live with the scars of their mistakes. Kingsolver showcases the moral reassessments

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