ipl-logo

The Poisonwood Bible By Barbara Kingsolver

1439 Words6 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The poisonwood bible literary criticism

Giving up everything is what The Poisonwood Bible is all about. Written by Barbara Kingsolver, a family of five moves to the Congo for missionary purposes. As the evangelical father makes the trip a living nightmare for the family, they grow into the ways of the Congo. Sacrificing basically their whole lives for their fathers religious purposes, the family breaks apart, all going their own ways. Kingsolver makes sure that every character gets a chance to tell their story as the live in the Congo. Sacrifice is the surrendering of a possession to offer a God. In the beginning of the book, the mother Orleanna Price, tells her story of the guilt that she is feeling from losing her child. She explains everything she has sacrificed to make her husband’s …show more content…

Morrow4 After Nathan, Orleanna decides that she will never love again, as she says to anyone who asks, “Nathan Price was all the marriage I need(531).’’ She gave up so much of life to Nathan that she has nothing left to give anyone else. Choosing to leave Nathan and her love life behind in the Congo shows how much respect she actually has for herself and her children. It showed she had to strength to put her children before her own love life. Kingsolver made Nathan leave her husband to show how extreme Nathan Price went into converting the Congolese people into civilized, Christian citizens. One last and most important thing that Orleanna has given up in the Congo, is her sanity. Orleanna Price will never be the same person after leaving the Congo with one child, losing one to death, and leaving the other two behind. Along with basically losing all but one child, she also loses her husband to the man above. Anyone would be different after all of that. Although anyone would probably go crazy after all of that, Orleanna stayed calm and kept to herself. It could be because she has nothing to say but it would most like be because of religion. She

Show More
Related
773 Words | 4 Pages

That if none of us confessed it, we could hold back the curse that was going to be our history.” (Kingsolver 438) regarding Ruth May’s death, and shortly afterward flew away from the Congo to another part of Africa with Eeben Axelroot. Adah went home to America with Orleanna, and Leah hopped back and forth between America and the Congo with her husband and children. After Ruth May’s death, Orleanna never saw her entire family together again until after her family shrank down by one living Nathan. After the exile of Nathan was confirmed to be permanently over, Orleanna went back to the Congo and met with all three of her surviving daughters.

Read More
863 Words | 4 Pages

Adah Price: an embodiment of the Congo. In Barbara Kingsolver’s novel, The Poisonwood Bible, Adah Price serves as an embodiment of the Congo before and after imperialism. By having Adah symbolize the Congo, Kingsolver emphasizes her message of the society’s lack of understanding and discrimination of different cultures and ideals: and idea still prevalent today with the rise of islamophobia across America. To begin, Adah’s initial purpose in the novel is to serve as an embodiment of the pre-imperialism Congo. Kingsolver quickly introduces this as even Adah herself remarks, “When you do not speak other people presume you to be deaf or feeble-minded” (Kingsolver 34).

Read More
627 Words | 3 Pages

The book Poisonwood Bible, written by Barbara Kingsolver, is about gender roles put on men and women and the oppression of women, in the Congo and in the American culture. This is shown throughout the book when Reverend Nathan Price believed women had to be conservative, and if they were not, God would punish them. Women and young girls do most of the work while men and boys can hunt and play. Both the Congolese and the American culture believe women do not deserve and education.     From the time the Price family had landed in the Congo, Nathan Price had portrayed that the Congolese were sinning and needed to be converted.

Read More
1623 Words | 7 Pages

In The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver creates a character Orleanna Price who was semi-voluntarily exiled to the Congo. She was exiled from a happy life due to her marriage to Nathan Price, she was exiled from both America and Americans when she moved to the Congo, and she was exiled from her family when her youngest daughter died. With each exile, Orleanna’s personality is enriched by the things she learns during that exile, and Orleanna finds herself alienated from the people and lifestyle she used to have before each exile. In the first exile, Orleanna’s personality is enriched from the general life lessons she learns with the experience of age. During that exile, she is alienated from everyone she meets if they meet, have met, or even

Read More
745 Words | 3 Pages

After one year you are going to be sacrificed. You are not given a choice to say yes or no so you go with the guards. This is such a good year that you forget that you are going to be sacrificed. A lot of the young women have become attached to you.

Read More
993 Words | 4 Pages

When in fact, he is only trying to compensate for what he didn’t do in the war. Barbara Kingsolver reveals, “Everything you’re sure is right can be wrong in another place.” She explains that Nathan Price wants to “save” the people of the Congo in a way that he thinks is just. Which, would not be so bad if he did it the correct way according to the Congolese. He is forcing them to convert into christianity.

Read More
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

Read More
690 Words | 3 Pages

What makes one willing enough to sacrifice her own life for others? How difficult can it be to willingly die for what one believes? What does it take to be a Christ-figure? Khaled Hosseini emphasizes the concept of sacrifice in A Thousand Splendid Suns. In this novel, Hosseini presents Mariam as a Christ-figure through her qualities and sacrifice.

Read More
956 Words | 4 Pages

Imagine traveling to a foreign country on a mission trip with your 4 children and husband. Doesn’t sound too bad, right? What about being forced to drag yourself and 4 children on a perilous trek at the command of an overzealous, religion obsessed husband to the African Congo in hopes of “saving” a community from their “wrong” way of living? In Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, a missionary family, ruled by an extremely opinionated and controlling husband, moves from their acquainted home in Bethlehem, Georgia to the poverty-stricken village of Kilanga in the Belgian Congo. As the family gathered and packed their most essential items needed for survival in a territory where they were not wanted, the thought of never returning flooded

Read More
775 Words | 4 Pages

The Significance of Motherly Sacrifice Many people take the sacrifices that parents make for them for granted. Specifically, many mothers give up important aspects of their lives for their children. Khaled Hosseini, author of A Thousand Splendid Suns demonstrates the significance of motherly sacrifice in several different ways through Nana, Laila, and Mariam.

Read More
258 Words | 2 Pages

Anti death of the author helps readers gain a deeper understanding of Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem, “truth.” In the biography of Gwendolyn Brooks from the Poetry Foundation, Brooks is quoted throughout about her personal life and how she was able to express her acceptance of her skin color in many different pieces of work including her poem “truth.” The biography quotes Brooks as she says, “I-who have ‘gone the gamut’ from an almost angry rejection of my dark skin by some of my brainwashed brothers and sisters to a queenhood in the new black sun.” (Poetry Foundation, page 3) Brooks was learning to welcome her skin color as stated in her poem where she writes, “Sweet it is, sweet it is/To sleep in the coolness/ Of snug unawareness./The dark hangs heavily/

Read More
447 Words | 2 Pages

In the story, John sacrifices his life to save for the king and the king sacrifices his sons’ lives to save for John in turn. As of today, sacrifice can be interpreted that to get something we really want, we have to sacrifice something we really enjoy, usually money and time. The purpose of reading this story for children is amusement as well as teaching a moral lesson about sacrifice. Children should learn sacrifice starting from sharing. From children’s point of views, sharing a favorite toy is also a sacrifice that takes something they really enjoy for others.

Read More
996 Words | 4 Pages

Sacrifices are the most revealing decisions made in life. Many times, people will not relinquish parts of their futures for moral betterment because they value empty personal gain over happiness. It takes a special person to make a sacrifice in hopes of achieving a more fulfilling life free of regret and dissatisfaction. In classic literature, female characters usually do not make impactful sacrifices for themselves, especially considering their limited rights to make choices during time periods set in the past. Displaying sacrifices for others to judge critically requires them to be more confident in their values than other characters are.

Read More
844 Words | 4 Pages

Because the children and mothers worry, this sacrifice doesn’t bring everyone happiness but instead creates a sense of unease to some. The people of Omelas logic and reasoning behind this tradition is irrational because

Read More
150 Words | 1 Pages

Sacrifice is standing up for what is right. Sacrifice is the key of love. Sacrifice is about making a difference. People makes sacrifice everyday they put their lives on the line to help kept

Read More

More about The Poisonwood Bible By Barbara Kingsolver

Related Topics

Open Document