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What Is Rachel Price Like In The Poisonwood Bible

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Shauna Reed Wetherington P.2 AP Literature 12/07/2016 Rachel Price: The Poisonwood Bible The best way to answer the question "Who is Rachel Price, and what is she like"? Is to simply say that She is a White Christian girl living in the Congo. She loves herself, her hair, and herself. Not necessarily in that order. If the girl wasn't funny in a matter of unintentionally making fun of herself, she would be intolerable to even read about. Throughout the book, like all of the characters she changes. The only difference is when she changes for the worse due to her inability to adapt, and her vain and naive fixed mindset. Rachel lives in her own world where she thinks she runs the show. Well guess what?, she does not. Within the first chapter she says says a lot of ignorant things like "took for granite" (1.3.3) and "give up the goat" (1.3.5). Leah says she's "famous for making things up out of thin air and stating them in a high, knowing tone" (1.9.6). This is one thing that very much reflects her dad. …show more content…

It is clear she meant to say philanthropist but she doesn't prove it until four husbands later when she ends up becoming the racist, gold digging, vain philanthropist she said she would become. Her way of survival is to work her way with these men so that she can fulfill her fixation of having money, comfort, and good looks. Who cares if nobody would ever truly love her other than the family she practically left behind. She was a basic 60's rich white girl. Her characteristics identify her more with a royal family than a girl who will adapt greatly being thrown into the Congo in the middle of Africa. Her way of adapting was to "ascend to heaven directly through a superior mindset"

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Kingsolver heavily uses hyperbole when speaking from Rachel’s perspective and includes blame as a theme to add personality to characters throughout the book. It is easy to discern Rachel’s voice from the other sisters due to her voice and the way she processes thoughts and emotions. Rachel overexaggerates nearly everything, causing her to be rarely satisfied and constantly discontent with the world around her but never blaming herself for any misfortunes. By describing Leah as “the cause of all our problems,” (Kingsolver, 335) you can see her need to displace any blame away from herself or a predicament’s true factors and onto one set person in the same dramatic way she does anything. A similar attitude can be seen throughout the Price family,

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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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Throughout one’s life, many circumstances take place that will change the individual forever. In Contending Forces, written by Pauline Hopkins, the author states, “And, after all, our surroundings influence our lives and characters as much as fate, destiny or any supernatural agency.” The character of Orleanna Price in The Poisonwood Bible undergoes sharp changes throughout her journey from a quiet home in Bethlehem, Georgia to the new, unpredictable environment of the Congo. Orleanna alters from a woman who involves herself in the Georgian church community frequently to a woman whose only concern is surviving dangerous and chaotic events the African Congo beholds. Her character’s feelings toward her husband, Nathan Price, wane in terms of

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In the novel, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbra Kingsolver, poetry is continuously used to illustrate Adah’s character. Adah Price is the one character that always appears as though she does not belong. During her childhood while her family lived in Africa, she did not speak, and also was born with hemiplegia, which caused her to walk with a terrible limp. She was created to be very analytical, intelligent, and extremely outside the box. Her habits from when she was younger, such as reading and thinking backwards, can directly relate to her disability and is seen as her way of handling how it feels to be so different from those around her.

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Her completely refuses to believe that this is now her life. Her way of coping with the Congo is trying to cling to anything that reminds her of home. Her small hand mirror is something that she holds very dear. It is one of the first things she thinks of to grab in a life or death situation. Rachel never fully connects with any of the Congolese people, and finds it absolutely revolting about the idea that the Chief wants her as a wife.

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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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Susan B. Anthony (Susan Brownell Anthony) Susan B. Anthony was a prominent feminist author who started the movement of women’s suffrage and she was also the president of the National American Women Suffrage Association. Anthony was in favor of abolitionism as she was a fierce activist in the anti-slavery movement before the civil war. Susan Anthony was born on February 15, 1820, in Adams, Massachusetts, and before becoming a famous feminist figure, she worked as a teacher. Anthony grew up in a Quaker family that made her spend her time working on social causes. And her father was an owner of a local cotton mill.

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Cleaning houses are a girl’s best friend. Or is it diamonds? In The Dirt Diary, by Anna Staniszewski, the main character, Rachel Lee, must clean houses with her mother in order to pay back the money that she stole until her mom finds out about her purchase. Rachel uses the money to buy a one way ticket to Florida, where her father ran off to, to bring him home.

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The closing chapter describes the Price women returning to Africa many years later as group. The significance of this final chapter is marked by the narration of the deceased Ruth May, who though she is not alive, has came to a spiritual reassessment of her own. Ruth May, who seems to have encountered the worst trial of Africa, death, comes to one of the most preeminent reconciliations of any of the characters. Ruth May offers her mother advice stating, “you can still hold on but forgive, forgive and give for long as long as we both shall live I forgive you” (pg. 543). Orleanna, like Leah, deviated from the ways of Nathan Price after succumbing to the guilt of complying with of his overbearing and disrespectful actions towards the Congolese.

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