Adah In Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible

Introduction The Poisonwood Bible, written by Barbara Kingsolver and published in 1998, is a novel set in Kilanga, a small village in the Congo of Africa. The Prices are a family of six who venture from their home in Bethlehem, Georgia into the foreign world of the Congo on a missionary trip. The novel is told by five of the family members’ perspectives. As the Congo grows on the family, each one of the daughters and their mother learn more about themselves and each other than they could have learned back in Georgia. The Congo gave them a new perspective of their own lives and the lives of others. The Congo also gave them all a sense of independence, which inevitably led them to have enough courage to leave their father/husband, Nathan. In
return, Nathan does not make any sacrifices for his family. The imbalance causes the women of the Price family to find the strength to leave him in the Congo. Kingsolver sends the message that women can find the courage to leave a relationship lacking in balance, and that finding an individual’s independence is key to gaining that courage.
Article Analysis The opening paragraph of the article written by Sophie Croisy discusses how the “master of the household” is Nathan Price. Although Nathan Price is seen as the redeemer of his family, and his congregation, Croisy describes him in a negative light. The next paragraph explains how Nathan Price is the provider for the family because of his patriarchal status, but the novel shifts “sole providers” because of Nathan’s lack of family involvement, and girls begin to search for more meaning in the world. Not only have the girls experienced this enlightenment, but also the mother, Orleanna Price. Croisy is playing on the fact that Kingsolver took a “traditional 1960’s Baptist family from the South of the United States,” and turned it inside out. Crosy, in the final paragraph, talks about how the family in The Poisonwood Bible is destroyed because of the foreign place it has invaded, but also the birth of a new nation, which also fails because it was not meant to be on foreign soil. Nathan’s purpose is “to spread the word of God and enlighten his congregation,” but he takes this to an extreme, to the point where he pushes people away rather than draw them in. This is the character of Nathan. He really does not care as long as he believes his point has been made. The Poisonwood Bible is filled with examples of Nathan pushing people away, like telling the congregation Jesus is the poisonwood tree because of a simple mispronunciation, but he refuses to correct himself. Also, by disowning Leah over hunting with the men, he took the person who was closest to him, the person who believed him the most, and completely turned her against him. Nathan is seen as “abandoning” his family. This abandonment leads the girls and their mother to find who they are, and real how their father really is. Nathan has left them on several occasions, most of the time, he is gone all day doing his missionary work. While he is gone all day, this allows the rest of the family to learn more about the culture of the Congo. The girls and Orleanna discover truths about life and the world they are surrounded by, allowing them to have minds of their own. Orleanna realizes it is best to not waste your life, Rachel learns what it means to survive from her book, Leah learns that life in the Congo and life in North America are complete polar opposites, Adah debates the worth of a life, and Ruth May actually loses her life. Meanwhile, Nathan never truly learns anything from the Congo because he refuses to.
The family symbolizes the nation of Africa. The Price family is symbolic in that as it beings to fail, the government of the Congo beings to grow less stable, Throughout the novel, the reader is taken through a nation that was not free, but gained freedom, then gained a tyrant. The Price family was not fit for the Congo; the garden which they built was also symbolic of this. As much as they tried to grow and thrive in the Congo, they began to realize it was not for them, and they could change no one. Except Nathan. Nathan was actually pretty hopeful, but his mission brought about his own demise. At that same token, Africa’s government was failed its people.
Style Passage
In The Poisonwood Bible, Kingsolver uses her writing style to create her characters.
In the selected passage, Kingsolver’s nostalgic atmosphere is created through the use of her character’s thought-provoking diction and rhetorical questioning, personified imagery, and the creation of short, choppy sentences to provide the reader with an insight to Adah Price’s inner most feelings and thoughts. Adah is one of the most thought-provoking characters in The Poisonwood Bible. Kingsolver’s choice of diction when using Adah as the narrator is different from the other characters because she speaks more eloquently than her sisters. In the first lines of the passage, Adah is alluding Shakespeare’s Tempest to signify the changes her father created in their family. By referencing Shakespeare, Kingsolver creates a character with higher-level thinking processes, which adds to the eloquence of her character. Adah also questions the mind, using rhetorical questions to provoke inner thought. Her explanations are of higher level thought, rather than simply being stated. An example of this is when Adah questions the worth of a life. She compares real life to fantasy. Through this diction, it is perceived that Adah Price is not the girl who hides in the shadows because of her physical state; she is the girl who absorbs knowledge to her full extent. Through her questioning, she is seen as an intellectual who can reach beyond simplicity, and beyond the thinking capacity of her
sisters. Because Adah tends to think at a higher level than most of her family members, Kingsolver depicts this through Adah’s use of personified imagery. In the passage, Adah personifies remorse, the “ground her mother walks on”, and books. Adah is a comparative person, which is why it would be appropriate to associate her with comparing inanimate objects to real life. Personification develops the nostalgic atmosphere by showing Adah’s true feelings about her situation. By her comparing real life to feelings and objects, it can be inferred that Adah’s thoughts are loathing fantasy to be reality. But, Kingsolver is quick to let the reader know that although Adah wishes her situation was different, she does realize reality from fantasy. Kingsolver’s style that develops Adah’s character can be most clearly seen through syntax. To develop Adah’s nostalgic feeling in this passage, Kingsolver tried to create a sense on inner conflict. Adah is seen struggling with self- acceptance and self- discovery. The syntax is very short and choppy, which gives the impression that her thoughts are more intense and immediate. She elaborates on an idea like, “The books on the shelf rise up in sold lines of singing color, the world drops out, and its hidden shapes snap forward to meet my eyes,” only for the next sentence to reveal her wishful, nostalgic thinking by saying: “But it never lasts.” She also says, “Owning, disowning, recanting, recharting a hateful course of events to make sense of her complicity. We all are, I suppose. Trying to invent our version of the story.” Kingsolver’s intentional fragments are made to stand out so the reader can see the significance in Adah’s skeptical, yet understanding. Kingsolver’s syntax, when developing the character Adah Price, was to open the mind of a person who was not willing to do so verbally to the audience. It is the reader who has to decide who Adah is, even when Adah is not so sure herself. The constant back and forth of Adah’s ideas, the short sentences, were intentional to show that Adah does not know who she is. The syntax provides the reader with Adah’s one major conflict. Herself. Through the use of thought-provoking diction, personified imagery, and the creation of short, choppy sentences, Kingsolver was able to develop the character of Adah Price. This passage’s nostalgic atmosphere paved the way for the reader to understand why Adah Price is dealing with internal conflict.
Theme
In The Poisonwood Bible, there are five narrators, each giving a testimony to why and how the missionary Congo trip affected and forever changed their lives. Each character went through her own trials and tribulations, but what each character took away from the Congo was a sense of independence. Kingsolver not only had her characters gain self-freedom, but also related it to a nation who was struggling to gain independence as well. Orleanna Price was driven by guilt because of the death of her youngest, Ruth May. At the beginning of the novel, Orleanna is portrayed as a weak and self-deprecating mother. After the death of her daughter, she gains the strength needed to leave her husband, and move on. She even grows the garden she has always wanted, but yet she is not free of her guilt. Orleanna does not truly become free until the end of the novel, when her dead daughter is speaking to Orleanna in her muntu form. “You are afraid you might forget, but you never will. You will forgive and remember…Move on. Walk forward into the light” (543). Ruth May is telling her mother she is forgiven and that she is set free from the guilt she has been bound to for the duration of the novel. Rachel Price does not gain independence until she is older, but what has guided her road to independence was what she learned from a book. “How to Survive 101 Calamities was the name of the book,…I stuck out my elbows very hard into the ribs of the people who were crushing in around me, and kind of wedged myself in. Then I just more or less picked up my feet and it worked like a charm…carried along by everyone else’s power” (301-302). This is what made Rachel realize that she could use people to gain her independence. Although Rachel needed the people to use, she used them in a way to befit what she and only she needed or wanted. Like how she married a couple of men, and when the last one died, she gained his hotel, and made it in her own world. The hotel was the embodiment of Rachel’s success at gaining independence. Adah Price gains independence when she finally believes her life is worth saving even if those around her did not believe so. She was willing to “save myself in a river of people saving themselves” (306) it proved that she was strong enough mentally to help herself. She is still always the old Adah though. When she says, “And if they chanced to look down and see me struggling underneath them, they saw that even the crooked girl believed her own life was precious. That is what it means to be a beast in the kingdom” (306) is shows that she still sees herself as helpless, but also as a person willing to fight for her own life. Adah is one of the only sisters who came back to America when they left their father. There Adah made a life for herself by going to a university, and gained a position in a research lab where she studied microorganisms. Also, while in America, she is told that she can actually walk without a limp, and beings to develop that leg almost to the point where her limp is completely corrected. Adah is the embodiment of independence for this story. Ironically enough, she gains the most freedom in America, “the land of the free.”
Poetry Analysis
In The Poisonwood Bible, the character, Ruth May, is the youngest of the Price family.
Ruth May is the embodiment of a child-like imagination, where there are no limits or boundaries. The way Ruth May can connect with her environment is very similar to the way the speaker in the poem “Where the Sidewalk Ends” by Shel Silverstein, talks about the world where the sidewalk ends. In “Where the Sidewalk Ends,” Silverstein creates two worlds: one where the child-like soul thrives and one where the child-like soul is not acceptable. His poem is about how all of us have that whimsical soul, but it is bogged down by the “place where the smoke blows black” (line 7). In The Poisonwood Bible, Ruth May is the only one of her family members who has a child-like innocence and wonder, which makes sense because she is only a child. Her character was to give a different perspective of Africa. A perspective that showed the curiosity and wonder in
Africa. The poem itself is also whimsical. Its rhyme and rhythm follow no particular pattern all the way through. There are some patterns that keep the flow of the poem, for the most part being the subtle rhyme scheme. The repetition of lines makes the poem more song-like, which also adds to a more melodious and whimsical feel to the poem. The most interesting part is that line 10, “we shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow…” has galloping sound that stands out compared to the rest of the lines of the poem. Ironically, it is to enhance a sense of speed, but the line itself is saying they are moving slower. It is also interesting how the first lines in stanzas one and two do not rhyme with any of the other words in each stanza, interesting because they end just like the sidewalk ends.
The poem is tied to Ruth May’s personality and character by that in which none of the other characters in the novel possess the same trait: child-likeness. The nature of the poem and Ruth May go hand in hand because once she dies, she finally goes to the world she had dreamed of where the sidewalk ends. Ruth May, like the children in the poem, have wisdom about the world where the sidewalk ends that the adults cannot grasp, or have a harder time grasping because the real world refuses to let them think about the world where the sidewalk ends.
Conclusion
Kingsolver clearly defines each character in The Poisonwood Bible, by expressing them through her writing style. Each sister is given a distinct voice and perspective, which gives Kingsolver’s audience a sense of reality to the characters by seeing them as not just characters, but as people. The Poisonwood Bible is a novel about independence and the importance of finding it. Each character are seeking release, whether it is psychological or physical depends on the character, allowing this theme to be woven into the novel, deeply embedding this crave for freedom into every character. Independence is the hope that drives each character, the majority of the characters let independence drive them in the right direction, but for Nathan Price, his selfish hope was the catalyst for making his family venture on the trip in the first place. Kingsolver also creates a family that seems perfect to the outside world, but on the inside is broken, which leads the family to face all of the trials and tribulations throughout the novel. Kingsolver’s main message was: Self-reliance is key to gaining freedom of mind and independence.