By: Barbara Kingsolver
Orleanna, shut up! he yelled, grabbing her arm hard and jerking the plate out of her hand. He raised it up over her head and slammed it on the table, cracking it right in two. The smaller half flipped upside down as it broke, and lay there dribbling black plantain juice like blood onto the tablecloth. Mother stood hopelessly, holding her hands out to the plate like she wished she could mend its hurt feelings. You were getting too fond of that plate. Don t you think I ve noticed? She didn t answer him. I had hoped you might know better than to waste your devotion on the things of this world, but apparently I was mistaken. I am ashamed of you. You re right, she said quietly. I was too fond of that plate (Kingsolver 134).
Nathan price is a stock character. Throughout the novel he displays his disapproval for his wife, daughters, and the Congo. Nathan Price doesn t agree or support anyone or anything that doesn t fall under his strict order, or what he believes to be God s Law. Nathan often portrays God s will on ideas or things that will in the end work out for his own good. He appears to be a Baptist preacher who works only for the good of God, but in reality he is selfishly working to secure his own soul. Nathan resents his wife and daughters along with the people of the Congo because he feels as if they interfere with his clean slate and orderly rule. Along with being a stock character, Nathan Price is also one of the antagonists. His strict order often causes conflict in the girls lives and in the lives of those who reside in the Congo. His demeanor often causes his wife and kids to feel as if they should live on edge and alert of his ever-ready temper.
My father says a girl who fails to marry is veering from God s plan- that s what he s got against college for Adah and me, besides the wasted expense- and I m sure what he says is true. But without college, how will I learn anything of any account to teach others? And what redblooded American boy will look twice at a Geography whiz with scabs on her knees, when he could have a Sweater Girl? I suppose I ll just have to wait and see. God must know his arithmetic. He d plan it out well enough to plunk down a husband for every wife that he aims for to have one. If the Lord hasn t got a boyfriend lined up for me to marry, that s his business (149-150).
Leah Price is a round character. Leah constantly struggles with herself for being different. She feels out of place because she is gifted in school and is a tomboy. Throughout the book, she tries the hardest to earn her father s approval, but each time she fails miserably. She follows her father around, being extra careful of his temper, but her attempts of being wanted get ignored time and time again. She feels that if she could completely earn God s approval that her father would fully love her. Since her father never shows his love, Leah feels as if God doesn t fully approve of her either. Leah is also a first-person narrator. Throughout the book, we are told parts of the story through her point-of-view. We are welcomed into her thoughts and her internal stories through her first-hand conceptions.
The point-of-view in this novel switches between characters in each chapter. However, it remains in first-person narrative. The book is told from the perspectives of Orleanna Price, Leah Price, Rachel Price, Adah Price, and Ruth May Price. Throughout the whole novel, indirect characterization is the means of how the reader gets to know the different narrators.
I would be no different from the next one, if I hadn t paid my own little part in blood. I trod on Africa without a thought, straight from our family s divinely inspired beginning to our terrible end. In between, in the midst of all those steaming nights and days darkly colored, smelling of earth, I believe there lay some marrow of honest instruction. Sometimes I can nearly say what it was. If I could, I would fling it at others, I m afraid, at risk to their ease. I d slide this awful story off my shoulders, flatten it, sketch out our crimes like a failed battle plan and shake it in the faces of my neighbors, who are wary of me already. But Africa shifts under my hands, refusing to be party to failed relations. Refusing to be any place at all, or any thing but itself: the animal kingdom making hay in the kingdom of glory. So there it is, take your place. Leave nothing for a haunted old bat to use for disturbing the peace. Nothing, save for this life of her own (9-10).
Orleanna s perspective is different from all of the other narrators. She tells her story by reflecting back on her time in the Congo. The reader gets his or her insight by looking intently at Orleanna s regret and thoughts of her time spent in Africa. The dialogue through which Orleanna speaks is more developed and more insightful than that of the girls. Orleanna often foreshadows parts of the story through her thoughts and reflections.
The day after my birthday, Axleroot came over and we went for a walk. I more or less knew to expect him. His routine was to fly out to his mystery destination on Thursdays, come back Mondays, and come to our house on Tuesdays. So I d put on my tulip-tailored poisongreen suit, which has now officially faded to poison-drab and lost two of its buttons. For the first half of last year I prayed for a full length mirror, and the second half I praised the Lord we didn t have one. Still, who cares if my suit wasn t perfect. It wasn t a date, just a makebelieve date for appearances. I planned to walk with him to the village and not a speck farther (288).
Rachel s perspective is told in the same manner as her sisters. She tells her part of the story as if she were at the Congo. Rachel allows the reader into her thoughts and also offers the reader insight through dialogue. Rachel s point-of-view, along with those of her sisters, has a tendency to be one-sided and opinionated. Rachel s story is told through the perspective of a teenage girl who was forced to relocate to Africa, and through her tone the reader can easily identify how she is feeling at all times.
The church building, scene of our recent fest, resides at one end of the village. At the other end, our own house. And so when the Price family strolls to church we are able en route to peer straight into each and every villager s house. Every house has only a single square room and a thatched roof, under which might dwell the likes of Robinson Crusoe. But no one here stays under a roof. It is in the front yards- all the world s a stage of hard red dirt under bare foot- where tired thin women in every thinkable state of dress and despair poke sticks into their little fires and cook (31).
The setting of this book is mainly in different parts of Africa, more specifically, the Belgian Congo. For the main parts of the book the Price family is in a little African village called Kilanga. By the end of the novel, the girls are living in different places ranging from Africa to Atlanta. The geographical location of the book plays a huge role in the characters lives. The extreme poverty and death that the girls have to experience in Africa plays a huge part in how the girls grow and change throughout the novel. The location also causes the reader to feel somewhat gloomy throughout the whole book. Since the Price family moved from a Baptist community in Georgia and relocated to the Wild African Congo, a lot of their problems and conflicts trace back to that rough transition of cultures.
Fifteen years after it all happened, I sat by my radio in Atlanta listening to Senator Church and the special committee hearings on the Congo. I dug my nails into my palms till I d pierce my own flesh. Where had I been? Somewhere else entirely? Of the coupe, in August, I m sure we d understood nothing. From the next five months of Lumumba s imprisonment, escape, and recapture, I recall-what? The hardships of washing and cooking in a drought. A humiliating event in the church, and rising contentions in the village. Ruth May s illness, of course. And a shocking scrap with Leah, who wanted to go hunting with the men. I was occupied so entirely by each day, I felt detached by from anything so large as a month or a year. History didn t cross my mind. Now it does (323).
The time period of the book is from 1959 to 1986. The time period is significant to the novel because it helps the reader better understand the Price family s reasoning on their strict views on religion and their actions. The time period is also a significant aspect to the book because it goes hand in hand with the African culture historically.
Tata Ndu asked you to relay all that did he? Yes he did. And do you agree that I am leading your fellow villagers to partake of the meat of a rotten corpse? Anatole paused. You could see him trying out different words in his head. Finally he said, Reverend Price, do I not stand beside you in your church every Sunday, translating the words of the Bible and your sermons? My father did not exactly say yes or no to that, though of course it was true. But that s Father, to a tee. He won t usually answer a question straight. He always acts like there s a trap somewhere and he s not about to get caught in it. Instead he asked, And, Anatole, do you not now sit at my table, translating the words of Tata Ndu s bible of false idolatry and his sermon aimed at me in particular. Yes, sir, that is what I am doing. Father laid his knife and fork crossways on his plate and took a breath, satisfied he d gained the upper hand. Father specializes in the upper hand. Brother Anatole, I pray every day for understanding and patience in leading brother Ndu to our church, he said. Perhaps I should pray for you as well, (129-130).
In the novel Nathan Price causes conflict by stubbornly trying to enforce Christianity on the people of the Congo. Nathan never considers the difference in cultures and is completely set in his ways. Christianity is not welcomed as warmly as Nathan would have liked by the people of the Congo and their leader Tata Ndu. This causes an immediate growing conflict throughout the novel.
It was at the end of a dry season, Orleanna, he snapped. When it s hot enough the puddles dry up. You brainless nitwit, he did not need to add. But how on earth did they run it without a fanbelt? our mother asked, understanding by the Reverend s irritation that she was expected to return to the subject at hand. She leaned forward to offer him biscuits from the bone-china platter, which she sometimes, secretly, cradled like a baby after the washing and drying. Today she gave its rim a gentle stroke before folding her hands in submission to father s will. She was wearing a jaunty shirtwaist, white with small red and blue semaphore flags. It had been her outermost dress when we came over. Its frantic little banners seemed to be signaling disaster now, on account of Mama Tataba s vigorous washings in the river. He leaned forward to give us the full effect of his red eyebrows and prominent jaw. Elephant grass, he pronounced triumphantly. We sat frozen, the food in our mouths momentarily unchewed (74-75).
Nathan causes conflict again in the lives of his family. By causing his family to feel as if they are walking on thin ice and by never showing any sign of love and emotion towards them, he is forming a widening rift between himself and his family. The girls commonly refer to him as Reverend which puts his role as a father on a less personal level. Nathan constantly makes it clear that his wife and kids will never live up to his high standards or those standards he claims God sets for all. By doing this his family slowly pushes him away from them and resents him even more.
We would all have to escape Africa by a different route. Some of us are in the ground now and some are above it, but we re all women, made of the same scarred earth. I study my grown daughters now, for signs they are resting in some kind of peace. How did they manage? When I remain hounded by judgment? The eyes in the trees open onto my dreams. In daylight they watch my crooked hands while I scratch the soil in my damp garden. What do you want from me? When I raise my crazy old eyes and talk to myself, what do you want me to tell you? Oh, little beast, little favorite. Can t you see I died as well (89).
Another underlying conflict in the novel is Africa verses the Price family. The unknown wilderness and the diseases that the Congo carries is a conflict in itself. The African Congo starts to take on somewhat of a human form and the girls, especially Orleanna, view it as a living, breathing beast. The Congo constantly thrusts the harshness of sickness and death at the Price family and awaits patiently to claim its next victim.
If I could reach backward somehow to give father just one gift, it would be the simple human relief of knowing you ve done wrong, and living through it. Poor father, who was just one of a million men who never did catch on. He stamped me with a belief in justice, then drenched me in culpability, and I wouldn t wish such torment on even a mosquito. But that exacting, tyrannical God of his has left me for good (525).
On the same August day, this is all I knew: the pain in my household seemed plenty large enough to fill the whole world. Ruth May was slipping away into her fever. And it was Rachel s seventeenth birthday. I was wrapping up green glass earrings in tissue paper, hoping to make some small peace with my eldest child, while I tried to sponge the fire out of my youngest. And President Eisenhower was right then sending his orders to take over the Congo. Imagine that. His household was the world, and he d finished making up his mind about things (320).
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver is about how people learn to live and deal with regret and reveals that each person has to cope differently with it. Since the novel is narrated by all women, it shows guilt related to women s consciences and emotions. Throughout the novel the girls feel continuous regret over the fact that they let their father down time and time again. The girls also have to learn to cope with the death of a loved one and a place they used to call home. Another thing they regret is how they took the easiness and freedom of life back in Georgia for granted. The girls also feel guilt over the role they played, along with the United States, in the tragedies Africa faced. Throughout the whole book, guilt creeps up into the lives of the Price women and slowly turns their world upside down.
Kingsolver, Barbara. The Poisonwood Bible. Harper Collins Publishers: New York, 1998.