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Sacrifice In The Poisonwood Bible

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In her novel ‘The Poisonwood Bible,’ Barbara Kinsolver’s theme of sacrifice is shown through the character of Nathan Price. Nathan is a Baptist minister who sacrifices a life full of commodities to bring God’s gospel to Kilanga, a small village in the Congo. His sacrifice exhibits his appreciation for persistence, his arrogance, and the guilt and fear he carries with him. Nathan is used to explore colonial ideas and the way in which religion can be used to spread fear. Nathan Price values persistence by demonstrating his unwillingness to give up on his mission when things get difficult. On their mission to bring God to the people of a small village in the Congo, the Price family faces a lot of adversity. However, things get harder when they …show more content…

Nathan Price doesn’t listen to anyone but himself, “Father would sooner watch us all perish one by one than listen to anybody but himself.” (Kingsolver, 169) Rachel narrates how her dad refused to return to America. The missionaries tried to convince him to leave, but just as Rachel expresses, he only listens to himself. Even if his whole family dies in the Congo, Nathan’s arrogance won’t allow him to listen to others. This, however, isn’t the only instance where Nathan shows how arrogant he is. When the Price family moved to Kilanga, Nathan decided to start a garden. Nathan is told by Mama Tataba, a local who helps the family with house chores, that he is doing it incorrectly. Nathan, not being able to listen to others, insists that he knows best, “‘Mama Tataba,’ he said at last, ‘ I’ve been tending the soil ever since I could walk behind my father.’”(Kingsolver, 40) Nathan indicates to Mama Tataba that he knows what he is doing with the soil, because he has been doing it since he was little. Nathan believes to know better than a local. This incident with Mama Tataba, as well as showing Nathan’s arrogance, also shows how he sees the people of Kilanga as ignorants. Nathan believes that people in Kilanga live in ignorance, just like colonizers thought of natives as savages and

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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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