ipl-logo

Summary Of The Poisonwood Bible By Barbara Kingsolver

266 Words2 Pages

In Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, Adah’s birds eye view of the world and descriptive voice brings a different view to the events that occur in the Congo. Her character demonstrates this through her genuine compassion towards the Congolese women and by saying that her father’s assessment of the women was illogical through her diction and point of view. Adah’s attitude towards the Congolese women is shown to be compassionate through her diction when describing the mourning women. She used words like “why, why, why” and “crawled” to demonstrate the women's broken hearts. Unlike her father she viewed the women in a state of loss and grief while her father saw them as the culprits behind the childrens death. Nathans use of the word

Show More
Related

  • The Poisonwood Bible By Barbara Kingsolver: Literary Analysis

    597 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver takes place in the early 1960’s and follows the Price family on their missionary trip to Kilanga, a village located in Congo, Africa. With their overzealous father, a devout preacher, as their leader, the Price family soon begins to fall apart as a result of their inability to cope with life in the Congo and their own over imposing social standards. Kingsolver particularly uses Nathan Price, and the political insurgence in Kilanga as the main literary elements to portray the social and political issues of the Western urge for dominance and exploitation of the third world. Kingsolver primarily uses Nathan Price’s disdain and unawareness for Kilanga’s customs and religious mindset as a symbol for Western

    Read More

  • Analysis Of A Poisonwood Bible By Barbara Kingsolver

    414 Words  | 2 Pages

    A Poisonwood Bible When describing Patrice Lumumba, Barbara Kingsolver uses complementary wording that makes the reader like him, or at least respect him. The Belgian doctor puts a cast on Ruth May’s arm on page 149 and calls Lumumba “the new soul of Africa”, which introduces Lumumba to the reader as a positive idea. When Leah sees Lumumba on pages 221-222, he’s described as “a thin, distinguished man” and that “when he stood to speak, everyone’s mouth shut... Even the birds seemed taken aback”. This portrayal makes him appear smart and scholarly and the reader is partial to him.

    Read More

  • Salinity In The Poisonwood Bible

    396 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the novel, The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver illustrates Nathan Price’s desire for power over the people of Kilanga and the women of his family through his religious beliefs to depict the materialization and effect the “White Man’s Burden” and misogyny can have on an individual. As the white man enters the heart of Africa to perform “God’s will”, he feels immense pleasure from overpowering the African natives. That white man is Nathan Price, a Southern Baptist Preacher. As Nathan and his family first arrive to the village of Kilanga, the villagers and their leader, Tata Ndu, welcome them with a freshly-killed goat.

    Read More

  • Differences In The Poisonwood Bible

    749 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Kikongo word nommo means “word”, it is the “force that makes things live as what they are” (Kingsolver, 209) . This is significant because this allows Adah to understand herself and her twin sister, Leah. Although they are twin sisters that have come from the same place they are in fact very different. The idea that a name creates one’s existence helps her understand why she and her twin sister are so different.  Muntu can mean man [as in mankind] or people which makes no special difference between living people, dead people, and children not yet born.

    Read More

  • Jessica Alexander Chapter 1 Summary

    956 Words  | 4 Pages

    The language used by Alexander is a single syllable syntax that is still very descriptive of setting and her emotions, but was not adequate. She also uses Westernized similes like when she relates a guard to a “grandpa on a rocker in front of our door” (6). The compared subject in her similes is closely tied to her white, middle-upper class upbringing.

    Read More

  • Bible And The Poisonwood Bible

    1160 Words  | 5 Pages

    Orleanna says, "To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know" (385). Adah says, about her mother, "... she constantly addresses the ground under her feet. Asking forgiveness. Owning, disowning, recanting, recharting a hateful course of events to make sense of her own complicity.

    Read More

  • Adah In The Poisonwood Bible

    1309 Words  | 6 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Leah Price In The Poisonwood Bible

    2112 Words  | 9 Pages

    Leah’s fight for Nathan’s attention and love has gone on for years, since she was born basically. Things quickly change for Leah, however when she meets Anatole. Being with and around Anatole shows Leah exactly how bad life in the Belgian Congo really is for the Congolese

    Read More

  • Nathan Price Character Analysis

    994 Words  | 4 Pages

    From Georgia to the Belgian Congo, a white southern missionary family during the late 1950’s moved to Africa with the hopes of exposing the native people to the Christian way of life. Throughout the novel, the Price family is met with many obstacles while trying to learn this new culture in which they were surrounded. Many of the obstacles were directly due to their ignorance of the country. A character in the novel, Leah Price, was faced with the challenge of following her father’s will but also assimilating to the people of Congo. Leah was the older twin, and a young, free-spirited, passionate girl who once worshipped her father and believed in his philosophy.

    Read More

  • The Poisonwood Bible Literary Analysis

    1462 Words  | 6 Pages

    In the novel, The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver, a missionary family travel to the African Congo during the 1960’s, in hopes of bringing enlightenment to the Congolese in terms of religion. The father, Nathan, believes wholeheartedly in his commitment, and this is ultimately his downfall when he fails to realize the damage that he is placing upon his family and onto the people living in Kilanga, and refuses to change the way he sees things. However, his wife, Orleanna, and her daughters, Rachel, Leah, Adah, and Ruth May, take the Congo in, and make the necessary changes in their lives, and they do this in order to survive with their new darkness that they are living in. Curiosity and acceptance help the ones with curious minds,

    Read More

  • Jamaica Kincaid's Blackness Essay

    479 Words  | 2 Pages

    This silent voice “stands opposite the blackness and yet it does not oppose the blackness, for conflict is not part of its nature” (473). Consequently, the silent voice allows the narrator’s consciousness to realize that she does not have to choose between cultures, but can be a mix of both. Through this silent voice, the narrator rids her consciousness of despair and hatred and moves forward solely in love.

    Read More

  • Orleanna Price In The Poisonwood Bible

    1034 Words  | 5 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • How Does Kate Chopin Use Gender Stereotypes In The Awakening

    1166 Words  | 5 Pages

    Throughout the novel, there are many instances of chauvinism essentially showing how women are treated throughout their lives. This novel is important to analyze because although it shows prejudice against women, it also shows how some women choose to fight against it. Experiencing gender stereotypes drove Edna into temptation because she

    Read More

  • Nathan's Perspective In The Poisonwood Bible

    520 Words  | 3 Pages

    Long enough to get a feel for the man, Nathan does not need his own narrative because not only is he very well represented by his wife and children, but you receive more dimension to his character without the narrative than one would ever get with

    Read More

  • Use Of Pain In Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life Of Bees

    741 Words  | 3 Pages

    The application of these three literary devices identify different types of suffering the Rosaleen, Lily, and May endure. Kidd applies indirect characterization to Rosaleen Daise to demonstrate the racial source of suffering Rosaleen experienced. Similar to the widow losing her husband, the pain is not always physical, but emotional as well. Rosaleen is

    Read More

More about Summary Of The Poisonwood Bible By Barbara Kingsolver

Open Document