Formal Essay: Poisonwood Bible

UnJi Nam
Mrs. Elliott
AP English Literature
7 January 2009
Interpretations in The Poisonwood Bible
At the start of The Poisonwood Bible, the reader understands the straightforwardness of the plot and mission—the Price family of Bethlehem, U.S.A, is going to the Congo as a missionary family. The expected reasons are stated: for the noble pursuit of saving souls; educating the people to be more civilized; and the education of the daughters to be less worldly and better Christian women. Of course, as the novel progresses, events don’t turn out as planned. What was the beginning of a simple, clear-cut mission grows in the soil of African society to have different ramifications and consequences for everyone, including the Prices. As the family continues in their stay in the Congo, they begin to learn just how many and varied nuances there can be things—words have multiple meanings, actions carry subtle agendas underneath the surface, and events can be double-edged. The effect that the presence of these multiple realities presents on the reader is simple. Leah, the second oldest daughter, later on in her life sums it up as “Everything you’re sure is right can be wrong in another place. Especially here.” After all, Prices’ came into Africa believing they had pitiably little—a mere forty-four pounds plus some of worldly goods to keep them all alive and sheltered from the jungle. The Prices came into the jungle believing that their good intentions would redeem them and save the natives of Congo. The Prices came into the Congo thinking that they and their country were qualified to judge and intervene in others due to their superior position in morals and way of life. The Price women believed that it was the natural way of the world to have one entity dominating the other. It is these basic, unspoken beliefs that end up changing in the Price women, as they in varying degrees learn of the Congo’s own strengths, and the validity of other viewpoints besides their own—a theme that echoes at the individual and political level of the novel. The American citizens who learned of their own responsibilities for the Congo’s troubles, the country that subsidized war and dictators abroad for its own gains but claims innocence.
For the Price girls, Africa to them is a frightening, almost threatening new world at times. Represented by the ill-fated garden their father Nathan Price tries to cultivate in African soil, the girls at first grow well under his watchful supervision. They grow a new interest in maintaining the home at first, traditional sphere of women, using the house as protection from their new lives. But they and the garden grow quickly out of hand, as they both settle into the environment. Ultimately, the girls abandon what their father has taught them, and take up different parts of his philosophy to form their own individual beliefs. Nathan Price himself never changes much, rather stiffening in response to new ideas that threaten his own and decrying them all. In his own views, he is a steadfast servant of God, standing his moral ground as the prophets did in the old days, come hell or high water. In the women’s standpoint, in varying degrees he is a restrictive, illogical and tragic figure that cannot help the people he came to save, nor his own tortured soul. The point the novel raises in response to the many possible realities and “slants” of a single event or question is: Is there really a set, universal truth? Is there really a single viewpoint, a single interpretation that holds true in all circumstances? Or is such a belief of a single superior translation a mark of ignorance, a tragic feature of colonialism, in domination in general? What Nathan Price is to the world and to his family is one example of an event with multiple “translations”.
The main question asked by Kingsolver in the novel is “How does one respond to the situation of Africa, of all colonized regions, in regards to personal responsibility? How is one individual responsible for the calamity of an international scale?” The five women of the novel: Orleanna, Rachel, Leah, Adah and Ruth May answer and respond differently. For Leah, she as an individual is still responsible for what happened in the Congo despite her ignorance—colonization, political subordination, human rights violations—she as part of a country’s citizen, by her very ignorance of such a situation going on, is guilty. She responds by political activism, by educating her neighbors in Africa and America, by she and her family staying in Africa despite the hardships—her own method for redemption. She maintains yet her old idealism, hope for justice, and love for her community. In a way, though she is no longer a Christian, she has kept to the old ideals of the religion better than her father the missionary ever did. Rachel remains stubbornly the same over the years as she continues to reside in Africa, still self-centered and materialistic as ever, maintaining that whatever tragedies did happen, she was only a bystander in it, floating along with the crowd. Her new religion now is herself as the goddess, she and her needs alone to be taken care of—a distinctly American philosophy. While she is haunted by the knowledge that the western position in Africa is one with no true authority to meddle, one of greed and selfishness mirrored in her, she ultimately chooses to ignore her thoughts, and continues to live for herself without attempting to change the situation. Again, a very American philosophy, mirrored by her peers at home. Adah takes a wider view of life, maintaining the right of all creatures, from viruses on up, to fight to survive for life. She sees political events as ultimately useless when it comes to the whole of life. Orleanna goes the most in depth as to what her sins were—complicity by submissiveness, loss of innocence and trust in her husband, who represents Western ideas, and inaction due to pressing family needs. And lastly, Ruth May takes no sides, but chooses to emphasize how the many opinions and slants of individuals change history and the future, the perfect judge in the trees. Ultimately, the effect is that no one interpretation, no one action can claim to be superior then the other. It was living that diverged the individuals, the events of their own lives that caused them to find their own separate philosophies to survive. Ruth May, the guiding light of the family, leading the women from a state of innocence, to tragic knowledge, leads her family at the end of the novel from divergent views to unite them in basic shared humanity—love, light and forgiveness.
Ultimately, the novel delves into what is true darkness, and how people choose to respond to it. Many, such as Nathan Price, dream of destroying it heroically despite the costs, hence redeeming and glorifying himself. Kingsolver illustrates that it is his very determination and stubbornness to not change his ideas for others that leads to his tragedy—his own ideas made nothing more than “most insufferable”, a mistranslation of the West’s ideals of love and right of the individual into evil for the Congolese instead. It is the women who the ones that see how “the last shall be first”; who responds to darkness on their own terms, re-interpret the ideas and texts of their youth and continue living. It is those that can appreciate the many versions and translations of an event who can best keep the “light”—human virtues of love, friendship, mutual benefit—alive.