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The Poisonwood Bible Character Analysis

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The Poisonwood Bible Everyone in the world has someone that they want to grow up and be just like them in every way, and in the Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, the reader views a young girl named Leah Price who is devoting her life to being just like her father. As a young girl, she absolutely adores everything about her father while trying to be his favorite; she follows him around doing everything he does until he makes them move across the world to a city named Kilanga in the deep Congo. Throughout the novel, Leah begins to change her viewpoints about her father as his decisions put their family in danger. The geography, culture, and the physical presence of others all contribute to Leah’s complex character and help shape her …show more content…

She learns that doing things to please herself instead of her father makes her feel more accomplished and have that sense of worthiness that her father wasn’t giving her. Kingsolver uses these factors to get the audience to notice the change in Leah’s views and beliefs as the book proceeds on and as she grows up into a woman. Her relationship with her father is a lot like her relationship with God since she talks to both of them and neither of them ever respond directly to her. She feels unwanted and like a distraction to her father’s main purpose in life, which is to save people through the word of God. Her surroundings in the Congo begin to shape her morals and psychological beliefs that push her away from not only her father, but God as well. This is why Leah is such a complex character since she moves away from Nathan’s footsteps and pushes for her own independence through the three factors of geography, culture, and the physical …show more content…

Kingsolver uses her beginning to show the vast change from relying so heavily on her family early on and trying to get acceptance from her careless father into going completely independent in the end. As the family prepares for their journey into the vast unknown and not knowing what to bring or what to expect from this foreign place Leah says “Someday perhaps I shall demonstrate to all of Africa how to grow crops.” (Kingsolver 38) The reader could read this two ways. Either it could mean she just wants to help Africa grow crops, or it could be her trying to be like her father because he is going to the Congo to help the people get saved in the word of God, and Leah believes she is going to keep progressing and help all of Africa grow crops just like the healthy crops of America. As the Price family arrives in the Congo and they aren’t arriving to a nice paved airport or security, but they are arriving on a dirt airfield and the whole Kilanga community is waiting there ready to greet them. Although the Congo doesn’t have the supermarkets, paved roads, or running water; according

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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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By describing Orleanna as a botanical garden, it’s showing her growth flourishing, showing from beginning to end how she’s changing into something beautiful that she couldn’t be before. Through all of this there was reasoning, the quest itself; “the real reason for a quest is always self-knowledge”(Foster 3) which directly applies to Orleanna. The trip Congo would be considered the quest, in this case the reasoning is to “convert” others to Christianity. Instead the questor himself failed the task but so did his family. The quest resulted in self- realization, knowledge, and a warning that it’s not Congo that needs to be changed; it’s them and Congo teaches them

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“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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The kilanga people didn’t want Nathan to be there at all, especially not forcing religion and lifestyle upon them. This causes many issues between the village people and the Price family. Nathan doesn’t see the congolese as people, but more as animals he must train. There are some of his daughters that agree with Nathan, like Leah who does a lot with her father, but most of the daughters really only want to go

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This further expands on the meaning by showing the contrast of how little the Congolese care for others’ appearances when compared to the American view. The Congolese shared their view on appearances near the beginning of the novel when describing Mama Mwanza and Mama Nguza. The Americans think Orleanna became tainted while she was in the Congo. Even though Orleanna used to live in Bethlehem, the other residents of the town don’t view her the same way as they did before she went to the Congo. Adah even commented on their reception: “...welcome home the pitiful Prices!

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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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Pauline Hopkins once said that “our surroundings influence ours lives and characters as just as much as fate, destiny, or any supernatural agency does.” In most cases, Hopkins would be correct. One can absolutely see this concept in the case of Leah Price from The Poisonwood Bible. Early in this novel, Leah Price is the daughter that tried to follow in her father 's footsteps. Almost everything that Leah does is to gain the respect from her father, Nathan, that she so craves.

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She learns that doing things to please herself instead of her father makes her feel more accomplished and have that sense of worthiness that her father wasn’t giving her. Kingsolver uses these factors to get the audience to see the change in Leah’s views and beliefs as the book goes on and as she grows up into a woman. Her relationship with her father is a lot like her relationship with God because she talks to both of them and neither of them ever respond directly to her. She feels unwanted and like a distraction to her father’s main purpose in life, which is to save people through the word of God. Her surroundings in the Congo begin to shape her morals and psychological beliefs that push her away from not only her father, but God as well.

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As you keep reading you start to see Leah 's relationship with her father and the Lord start to become shaky when she see how they culture in in the Congos and learns about human rights. When Leah has journeyed the Congo over the period of time she begins to meet new people and seek new culture. Leah watches how her father looks down on people and his family, knowing it 's morally wrong and she doesn 't think the same way as him she begins to restrain herself slowly from his presents. Leah 's culture she once was changes as she “learns the language of Kikango and begins to recognize the wide gap between cultures and between American games.” (Ognibene) Leah has shifted her place because she does not want to be associated with her father and his attitude, which causes her to learn more about the Congos and the people inside it.

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Cruelty exists in many forms, just as it has a multitude of affects on different people and characters. In both The Poisonwood Bible by Barbra Kingslover and Macbeth by William Shakespeare, the nature, will, and personalities of the characters are put to the test in response to cruelty. As demonstrated in both of these novels, cruelty can shape a character by revealing the true nature of the victim and bringing guilt upon the perpetrator, which proves that cruelty is the driving force in character development. In The Poisonwood Bible, Nathan Price brings his family to the Congo on a conversion mission, and it quickly becomes obvious that he cares more about the mission than his own family.

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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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