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The Poisonwood Bible Analysis

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Women have come a long way to fight for their representation. Before females were allowed to vote or work they were viewed as homemakers; they were their husbands’chattels. They were considered vulnerable and incapable of intelligence. Should women have to depend on the man of the family to represent their needs? Children of patriarchal societies should have the ability to learn even in college, whether they are male or female. In The Poisonwood Bible, the four daughters of the tyrannical Nathan Price are forced into a strong dictatorship and being dependent on their father to take care of them. Kingsolver writes from the perspective of the Price girls to show how they feel a lack of equality to men in America and in the Congo. The girls learn …show more content…

In The Poisonwood Bible the girls express their feelings towards their father and his negative criticism. According to Nathan, “Sending a girl to college is like pouring water in your shoes [...] It’s hard to say which is worse, seeing it run out and waste the water, or seeing it hold in and wreck the shoes”(pg.56). He disproves of girls attending college because he seems to fear the knowledge they will absorb and considers it a waste of money and time. As a preacher, he has the attention of the whole congregation, members of the church go to the preacher or/pastor for understanding. Nathan clings to his authoritative power towards his daughters, wife, and the Congolese. “ Who is the master of this house?”(339), Nathan asks Leah when she disobeys her father and is prohibited from hunting with the men. As a preacher, Nathan Price thinks highly of himself and takes advantage of his position and uses The Bible to defend his domination, “[...]God has ordained that you honor thy father and submit thyself to the rules of his house”(pg 339). Any Christian knows that one of the ten commandments is to obey your mother and father. But Nathan uses that commandment to either get his family to agree with him or to make them go against their own

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324 Words | 2 Pages

A Response to Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible and the essentializing of Africa: a critical double standard? Barbara Kingsolver was not able to enter the Congo/Zaire while she was writing this book. She admits that she is relying on memories, other cultures, and others accounts of what the Congo/Zaire is like to write this book. I disagree with what William F. Purcell has to say about the use of cultures in her book.

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854 Words | 4 Pages

Imagine being fourteen years old and living in a small town in Georgia, packing up as much as you can, or what could fit under your clothes and into a bag, and moving to the Congo of Africa. That’s exactly what the Price family did under their father’s will. Throughout Barbara Kingsolver 's Poisonwood Bible, Leah price experiences the Congo to its’ full potential. Both her psychological and moral traits were formed by cultural, physical, and geographical surroundings. The congolese people influence her decisions and thoughts throughout the book.

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390 Words | 2 Pages

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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120 Words | 1 Pages

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.

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835 Words | 4 Pages

Bearing Guiltiness within The Poisonwood Bible Foreshadowing is a literary device many authors use to hint at future events containing influential and thematic material; and authors tend to introduce their major themes through foreshadowing in opening scenes or a prologue. Barbra Kingsolver’s novel, The Poisonwood Bible, follows this very trend. Orleanna Price, in the first chapter, describes her burden of guilt toward choices she has made and the death of the youngest of her four daughters, Ruth May. Throughout the story, you discover the guilt within each of the five women: Adah, Leah, Rachel, Orleanna, and Ruth May. Due to supporting implications within the opening chapter of The Poisonwood Bible, with continuing evidence throughout the novel, it can be concluded that guiltiness is a motif.

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608 Words | 3 Pages

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.

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1131 Words | 5 Pages

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.

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654 Words | 3 Pages

Diego Carbajal Miss Given World Literature 05 February 2018 Response Journal #3 Storytelling is an essential element in The Poisonwood Bible, it is specifically used to tell each side of one story. Using different points of views to get a various amount of opinions on an event that happened in the book. Kingsolver implements this in her book using the four girls and Orleanna. This gives the reader a vivid image of what is going on between every narrator telling their side of the story.

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520 Words | 3 Pages

A common question one ponders while reading the Poisonwood Bible is, why is Nathan not given a perspective in the narrative. More appropriately, the question should be whether Nathan needs a perspective, and the answer is not only no, but by reading the book in the Orleanna’s perspective, we gain more insight into Nathan than we would have if we were reading in his narrative. Orleanna Price has very minimal narrative, yet has some of the greatest insights about her husband. Right off the bat, she claims “I married a man who could never love me, probably. It would have trespassed on his devotion to all mankind.

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968 Words | 4 Pages

“How did this curse come to me when it’s God’s own will to cultivate the soil. ”(placeholder) As a mother orleanna price is a protective caring mother that loses everything to keep a unhappy marriage aflot. Orleanna price is a prime example of this child like point of view. As a american house mother in georgia she sees the point of view of the americans and her family, but when nathan her husband forces her family to go to the Congo as a Christian mission trip.

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414 Words | 2 Pages

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.

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1462 Words | 6 Pages

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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2846 Words | 12 Pages

Even that my father wouldn’t have known… He knew nothing about the children” (Kingsolver 374). Leah is mourning the family’s loss while Nathan runs around attempting to baptise every child in the village during the downpour. After facing Nathan’s abuse, the Price women choose to abandon Nathan. Nathan further proves only the women are the logical ones despite them having no power.

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1020 Words | 5 Pages

Gavyn Englebach Miss Given Honors English 5 February 2018 Poisonwood Bible Response #3 The Poisonwood Bible implies that storytelling is a way to reflect on yourself, to see where you started and how you have changed.

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1297 Words | 6 Pages

Barbara Kingsolver’s novel, The Poisonwood Bible, is about a missionary family named the Prices who move from the U.S. state of Georgia to the village of Kilanga in the Belgian Congo. For the Price women, their previous identities consisted of their relationship to their American culture; once they are in Africa, that identity is forced to shift and adapt to the African culture. Homi Bhabha’s concept of “hybridity”, is defined as the result of the interactions of colonizers and colonized. Bhabba writes that colonizing cultures cannot alter a native culture without adapting characteristics themselves. The members of the Price family come into Africa bringing their own American ideologies with the goal to educate the native people, starting with

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