Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible

Starting Over

In a battle between light and darkness, which would win? Where light is, darkness

cannot exist. In her novel The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver proves this point through

the eyes of three women who persevere through hardships. As the journals of Orleanna, Leah,

and Adah unfold, three separate meanings of "walk forward into the light" are found.

Kingsolver uses her excellent sense of diction to weave heavy-hearted words throughout

Orleanna's journals to express her sufferings following Ruth May's death. In her journals,

Orleanna states, "Maybe I'll even confess the truth, that I rode in with the horsemen and beheld

the apocalypse, but still I'll insist I was only a captive witness. What
is the conqueror's wife if

not a conquest herself?" implying that although the guilt should fall to her husband, Nathan,

she too feels the pain because she is tightly knit to him. Her darkness is obviously a guilt-ridden

conscience. Apart from the heartache, Orleanna feels responsible for her daughter's early

passing. She believes her daughter's absence partially her fault, having stayed in Africa long

after she had intended. The light is her garden. She returns home and plants a beautiful flower

and vegetable garden all her own. This garden reminds her that she left not only her house in the

village, but also the pain and eventually the guilt, and she comes to accept a new life.

Leah's loss of faith proves problematic during her stay in Africa. Throughout her life,

Leah yearns for God's approval and acceptance. She does everything in her power to earn His

favor. When the fire ants swarm the village, her faith in her God dissipates. The darkness in this

case is Leah's sudden disbelief in a loving God. Metaphors are abundant in Leah's journals. On

page 94, she compares her father's demonstration garden to a funeral parlor, full of flowers, but

no produce. Also, the tone of her journals indicates that she cannot understand why such a

loving God will allow something like this to occur. She claims she "felt the breath of God go

cold" (376). The light is her renewed faith not in her God, but in her "white triangle of shirt,"

(282) her lover, Anatole.

The tone of the majority of Adah's journals is that of an obituary.
Phrases such as, "The

smiling bald man with the grandfather face has another face" (307) and "In the world, the

carrying capacity for humans is limited. History holds all things in the balance, including large

hopes and short lives" (452) while demonstrating great knowledge and insight, are also mirrors

of her morbid view of humans and nature. Unlike her mother or sister, Adah is born into her

shadow-world. Adah is born with a "slant" putting her, in her own eyes, beneath others. She

feels her condition holds her eternally bound in the shadows of Leah and the rest of her family.

For Adah, the darkness is clearly the imaginary gorge that separates her from the rest of

humanity. In her journals as well as everyday life, Adah separates herself by rarely speaking and

by doing tasks entirely backwards, further stretching the gap she envisions between herself and

the rest of the world. The light in Adah's world is the realization of her capability to love and be

loved. The tone in her journals gradually lightens as Adah's view changes her view of the world

from mortal enemy to friend. As she loses her "slant," she begins to realize that people in her
life

truly care for her and begins to love herself as well as others.

In short, through the ups and downs of the lives of Orleanna and two of her daughters,

Leah and Adah, three different meanings for "walk forward into the light," the last sentence in

the book, are offered. Darkness is anything that hinders a person from living a full life. Light

can be anything from a garden of one's own, as in Orleanna's case, to having faith in and loving

someone, as in Leah's, to learning to be loved, as in Adah's. Darkness is always defeated by

light. Just flip on the switch.