Poison Wood Bible Themes
1) Theme 1: Females seen as unequal to men
• “The education of his family’s soul is never far from my father’s thoughts. He often says he views himself as the captain of a sinking mess of female minds” (Leah, page 32)
• “He warned Mother not to flout God’s Will by expecting too much for us. ‘Sending a girl to college is like pouring water in your shoes… it’s hard to say which is worse, seeing it run out and waste the water, or seeing it hold in and wreck the shoes” (Adah, page 50)
• “When his screaming got too pathetic to bear, our grim-faced mother brought in his cage and set it on the floor by the window, where Methuselah continued his loud, random commentary. In addition to papism, the Reverend probably suspected the noisy creature of latent femaleness” (Adah, page 55).
• “Feed the belly and the soul will come. (Not having noticed, for a wife is beneath notice, that this exactly what our mother did when she killed all the chickens”) (Adah, page 63).
• “Until that moment I’d thought that I could have it both ways: to be one of them, and also be my husband’s wife. What conceit! I was an instrument, his animal. Nothing more” (Orleanna, page 77).
2) Theme 2: Western Arrogance
• "We aimed for no more than to have dominion over every creature that moved upon the earth. And so it came to pass that we stepped down there on a place we believed unformed, where only darkness moved on the face of the waters” (Orleanna, page 10).
• “She had reshaped our garden overnight into eight neat burial mounds. I fetched my father…then the two of us together, without a word passing between us, leveled it out again as flat the Great
Plains” (Leah, page 37)
• “He couldn’t begin to comprehend, now, how far off the track he was with his baptismal fixation. The village chief, Tata Ndu, was loudly warning people away from the church on the grounds that Nathan wanted to feed their children to the crocodiles. Even Nathan might have recognized this was a circumstance that called for
• “The education of his family’s soul is never far from my father’s thoughts. He often says he views himself as the captain of a sinking mess of female minds” (Leah, page 32)
• “He warned Mother not to flout God’s Will by expecting too much for us. ‘Sending a girl to college is like pouring water in your shoes… it’s hard to say which is worse, seeing it run out and waste the water, or seeing it hold in and wreck the shoes” (Adah, page 50)
• “When his screaming got too pathetic to bear, our grim-faced mother brought in his cage and set it on the floor by the window, where Methuselah continued his loud, random commentary. In addition to papism, the Reverend probably suspected the noisy creature of latent femaleness” (Adah, page 55).
• “Feed the belly and the soul will come. (Not having noticed, for a wife is beneath notice, that this exactly what our mother did when she killed all the chickens”) (Adah, page 63).
• “Until that moment I’d thought that I could have it both ways: to be one of them, and also be my husband’s wife. What conceit! I was an instrument, his animal. Nothing more” (Orleanna, page 77).
2) Theme 2: Western Arrogance
• "We aimed for no more than to have dominion over every creature that moved upon the earth. And so it came to pass that we stepped down there on a place we believed unformed, where only darkness moved on the face of the waters” (Orleanna, page 10).
• “She had reshaped our garden overnight into eight neat burial mounds. I fetched my father…then the two of us together, without a word passing between us, leveled it out again as flat the Great
Plains” (Leah, page 37)
• “He couldn’t begin to comprehend, now, how far off the track he was with his baptismal fixation. The village chief, Tata Ndu, was loudly warning people away from the church on the grounds that Nathan wanted to feed their children to the crocodiles. Even Nathan might have recognized this was a circumstance that called for