Allegory In The Poisonwood Bible

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

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