The title is first mentioned in the book when Adah was talking about how Bibles are remembered by their mistakes, which then explains Nathan's lecture on the "Poisonwood Bible" because of the way Nathan said Tata Jesus is Bangala, meaning Jesus was poisonwood. However, making memorable mistakes is a surface level understanding. In my opinion, the title's meaning represents Nathan's preaching to be poison to the Congolese because in the end, they are all hurt or scared, due to Nathan's insensitivity to culture and tradition. I believe that Kingsolver uses this title to reinforce the idea that forcing your own ideals onto a culture that is completely on the other side of the spectrum requires an open mind not like Nathan's.
B. Opening Chapters/first few pages
When reading the first opening pages of the book, Orleanna is confusing in that she alludes to many things in the book, and is very abstract; however, her vernacular makes it seem that she is a good mother, such as "sugar" and "baby," and this shows her caring side, and is susceptible to Nathan's overbearing, manipulative force. The different points of view give the story more insight on the perceptive of the book which makes the audience know what they are thinking. Back to Orleanna's opening lines, she talks as if something foreboding is going to happen later in the story, which is confirmed with the death of Ruth May.
C. Setting, time, place situation, actual geographic location, time period, history.
Most of the novel takes place in Africa from 1959 to the late 1980's. Nathan takes his family to the Congo as missionaries to preach the gospel and baptize the "saved." This great journey to the Congo occurs just before the Congo's independence and the election of the first prime minister. Since the prime minister was weak and powerless, the endeavor to maintain independence led to political instability and life threatening conditions for Europeans and Americans, including the Price family. Kingsolver uses the turmoil of this political event to invoke the life threatening effect and danger placed the Price family in Kilanga. Kilanga is the center of the nationalist movement that started in the 1920s and adds to the significance of the Price's family's danger and life assurance. Refusing to heed the warnings of other missionaries and to abandon the mission, Nathan stays within the confines of Africa even when most flee, and even under the terms of receiving no more money from the mission board. Until, Orleanna flees with some of her children, the family must experience the typically the life of the Congolese and live within their shoes that the African people live with. The death of the youngest child, Ruth May, finally drives Orleanna to finally walk her way out of Africa, taking Adah with her. The African continent affects each member of the Price family in a different way.
D. Characters
1. Nathan Price is a Baptist missionary who takes his family to the Congo for the ultimate goal of saving the Congolese people from damnation through any means possible even if that means rejecting their culture and traditions. His extreme methods eventually are what lead him to his death. Nathan is a self-centered, stubborn man with high expectations for the Congolese and his views on God as his ultimate source of motivation and actions. However, Nathan wasn't always like this, making him a dynamic character in regards to the past, but not the time period of the story. Nathan creates many conflicts with the Africans one of which involves the baptism ritual that the Africans highly disagree with not because of the meaning which Nathan thinks it to be but because of the crocodiles within the lake which Nathan obliviously misses with his blinded sight of extremism. He leaves no room for culture or traditions within Africa even if his attempts at this jeopardize his life or worst, his family's life. Throughout the book, the women in the family start of drift away from him which makes him more insane with his methods which leads to his tragic death.
2. Orleanna Price is the wife of Nathan Price and has four daughters. Orleanna seems like a weak character in that everyone pushes her around, and she has no opinion. She gets guilty readily from everyone ranging from her husband to her own kids who are supposed to respect her as a mother. Nathan marries her out of convenience of her aunt and truly is the sad factor to the story. Her voice at the beginning most of the books shows her wanting independence and strength but doesn't show it.
3. Rachel Price is the oldest daughter and is vain and stuck up. Rachel is self centered as seen in her ways of treating the African people as inferior and superficial and selfish because of her dreams of getting away and marriage a rich, beautiful man and living happily ever after. In a sense, she is delusional because she focuses not upon reality but on the tasteless glimpses of her hopes; however, Rachel does take advantage of whatever situation that comes upon her, but uses it to her own advantage. She also seeks attention from everyone and thinks that Europeans are of higher rank than Africans.
4. Leah Price is one of the twins that completely understands Africa for what it really is. Leah is a balanced character meaning she wants to understand her father's motives and takes into account every possible positive way of thinking, an optimist, but she is not blinded like Rachel and Nathan by madness and realizes that what her father is doing is beyond what she tried to believe he was doing in Africa. Leah is open minded, compassionate and is a loveable character and later on marries Anatole who is a school teacher and their love shows Leah's true love unlike her sister, Rachel.
4. Adah is the other twin that has a special quality about her because of her birth disease, hemiphegia and because of this event, she performs all of her tasks backwards which she seems to think to be a setback. Adah is a very interesting character that brings a whole new different perspective. Adah is a sensitive girl that may not actually understand what is truly meant through certain actions or words.
5. Ruth May is the youngest and the most loved of the daughters by Orleanna. Ruth May easily makes friends and has the brightest aura in the book. Her innocence and curiosity serves as a sympathy factor on her death by the snake. After she dies, that pushes Orleanna to finally leave the Congo.
E. Point of View
The book is written in first person, but with multiple narrators and perspectives. Each first person narration has limited omniscience and different vernacular; therefore, the audience can distinguish who is talking.
F. Conflict
The main conflict portrayed in the novel is the separated by each character in which may or may not be resolved. For the family (excluding Nathan), the main conflict is trying to figure out a way to either leave or live within the dangerous world of the Congo. Nathan's main conflict is mostly within himself and his methods and mindset. He feels that he is called by God to change, convert and civilize an entire culture about which he absolutely knows nothing. He has no compassion or leeway for his audience as he preaches; his motivation is to please his own madness and obsession of his twisted thoughts on his judging "God", but his actions are justified because of his wartime event and his cowardice which he seeks retribution on. Nathan wants to sacrifice himself and tries to atone for his past sins and experiences without any regards on his family's safety.
II. Commentary on Plot
A. Values and Importance on Characters
Nathan's effect on the book is to try and provide a ground on which all passionate people take their extremism too far. It is not Nathan's goals and dreams that are necessary wrong but his methods and the effect of the path he utilizes to get to them. His wartime experiences definitely shaped the way he lived life in the Congo and how his methods. He is so stuck on trying to redeem himself of his past sins that he is willing to do anything for God. Orleanna provides an effect of love and shows that people need courage to spur actions not events such as the death of Ruth May which could have been avoided if she would have left earlier. The daughters' perspective within the book is to give different insight on life in general. Rachel shows the superficiality of man-mind and how her world is based on worldly and meaningless objects. Leah shows the love of the aesthetic and the beauty within beauty. Leah is the character who actually understands and got the most of the experience. Adah adds to the book's sense of differentiation. Since Adah is different, she is specific and is portrayed as smart and intelligent, and shows that different people aren't strange. Ruth May shows the innocence of children and that to them, no separation exists, that all humans are humans regardless of anything.
B. Summarize the plot
1. The story of the Price family's adventure within the Congo that changes all of their lives for the better or worse, the challenge of changing is not easy.
2. On a separate sheet of paper
3. One major recurring event that happened throughout the book was the theme of how everything in Africa stayed in Africa. This theme is seemed to me to be majorly reinforced when Ruth May died because the green mamba becomes one with Ruth May's spirit and with the continent of Africa.
4. A similar story that this reminds me of is the struggle in the Bible when Peter was persecuted after Christ's death and was jailed and was writing letters to the many city-states one of which was Corinth, and in this letter he reminded the people that this is the will of God and do not try to impose your own actions upon something you do not understand because many followers were going to forcefully take him out of jail, but instead, a miracle happened in which Peter was let out of prison. Basically, shows that we shouldn't impose our ideas on something we have no idea on where to start like Nathan's methods on the Congolese.
5. Even though Ruth May's death was not located in the end of the book, I believe that the conclusion of Ruth May's death was satisfactory because with her death, she gives strength to her mother to finally leave the continent. Her death wasn't in vain, and many people learned from her death. Her death affects other people which is why I thought that her death was sad yet satisfactory.
III. Memorable Lines/Scenes
A. Memorable Lines
"It's a heavenly paradise in the Congo, and sometimes I want to live here forever." This line is spoken by Leah and keeps recurring in my head because I went back to this line and remembered that she got what she wanted. Even though at first I didn't know that it was foreshadowing and skipped the line meaninglessly, but later on I was scanning the book and saw this quote and it really spoke to me because it also shows that Leah got the most experience out of the situation and learned the most.
B. Quotations that illustrate the writer's skill in establishing mood/tone, imagery, symbolism, and characterization
"For women like me, it seems, it's not ours to take charge of beginnings and ending...I only know the middle ground where we live our lives....To resist occupation, whether you're a nation or merely a woman, you must understand the language of your enemy. Conquest and liberation and democracy and divorce are words that mean squat, basically, when you have hungry children and clothes to get out on the line, and it looks like rain." Orleanna says this line on page 383 and shows Kingsolver's characterization of Orleanna as once an emotional unstable character allowing everyone to run her life, and shows her own individual personality but not in action and finally when she leaves that is when it is shown.
IV. Theme And Other Abstract Ideas
A. Major Themes
Two of the major themes in the book were salvation/redemption of the past and the underestimated power of Africa. From the start of the book, Nathan seeks redemption within all of his crude actions and wants to atone for his sins and even when Ruth May dies she apologize to her mom keeping in character with her constant apologizes. Africa in of itself is a character and maybe even the antagonist because it seems that the land is always the center of the main conflicts. Nathan and Orleanna underestimated the power of the land and don't really understand why culture in Africa is so different from the Europeans and how this lifestyle cannot be mixed in with any other which if it does happen, chaos is rampant. Leah and Ruth May seemed to be enlightened by this idea and outpower their parents within this understand and live experienced-filled lives (doesn't apply to Ruth May).
B. How is each theme portrayed in the book?
The two themes are permeated from the beginning of the book to the end, and only Ruth May and Leah seem to grasp the idea that Africa is a living entity that will be inflicted with disaster and hardships but will always return back to good times. The theme of redemption is mainly seen with Nathan's struggle to atone for his cowardice military past.
C. Moral and Ethical Problems
The major ethical problem that reeks from the book is the theme of forceful actions. Trying to force an entire culture into believe in your own ideals is practically impossible. Every individual has their own way of thinking upon moral actions and by judging on their arbitrary thoughts will only get you killed as seen with Nathan's preaching skills.
D. What was the author's purpose in writing this book?
I believe that the author's purpose in writing this book is try to persuade people to change the way they live because the book shows the corruption that not only Nathan commits but also the mother's cowardice of not standing up for herself. Kingsolver wanted to show the world that imperialism is cruel and the idea of the white man's burden is a façade that needs to be made clear.
E. Author's writing
A predominate image that Kingsolver uses the entire book is the imagery of light. Light is shown both as a good and evil force. Light can kill a frog, but also grant plants life. The symbolism of light shows that there are also two sides to a dagger, the sharp side and the straight side. Do not quickly assume that the dagger as a negative element but take into account all views and understand of the whole picture. Again, only Ruth May and Leah understood these concepts.
V. Style
A. Describe how the author's overall style
The different books and voices that Kingsolver uses to provide a beautiful and compelling story is the style that she uses. The multiple personality aspect shows the difference between character morals and how each are seen and developed. For example, Nathan's character development was that he wanted to seek retribution within himself.
B. Author's specific style
One aspect of Kingsolver that I really admired was the use of the different point of views because she showed that characters of the same family were completely different in their beliefs not because they wanted to be different but because that was how they were developed. Ruth May diction shows her innocence and purity while Orleanna is a more sad tone with a sense of rebellion with it but it was all talk and not action until the last part of the book when she leaves and flees from Africa.
