By: Barbara Kingsolver
“ Orleanna, shut up!” he yelled, grabbing her arm hard and jerking
the plate out of her hand. He raised it up over her head and slammed
it on the table, cracking it right in two. The smaller half flipped
upside down as it broke, and lay there dribbling black plantain juice
like blood onto the tablecloth. Mother stood hopelessly, holding her
hands out to the plate like she wished she could mend its hurt
feelings.
“You were getting too fond of that plate. Don’t you think I’ve
noticed?”
She didn’t answer him.
“I had hoped you might know better than to waste your devotion on
the things of this world, but apparently I was mistaken. I am
ashamed of you.”
“You’re right,” she said quietly. “I was too fond of that plate”
(Kingsolver 134).
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
Nathan price is a stock character. Throughout the novel he displays
his disapproval for his wife, daughters, and the Congo. Nathan Price
doesn’t agree or support anyone or anything that doesn’t fall under
his strict order , or what he believes to be “God’s Law.” Nathan
often portrays God’s will on ideas or things that will in the end
work out for his own good. He appears to be a Baptist preacher who
works only for the good of God, but in reality he is selfishly
working to secure his own soul. Nathan resents his wife and
daughters along with the people of the Congo because he feels as if
they interfere with his “clean slate” and orderly rule.
Along with being a stock character, Nathan Price is also one of the
antagonists. His strict order often causes conflict in the girls’ lives
and in the lives of those who reside in the Congo. His demeanor
often causes his wife and kids to feel as if they should live on edge
and alert of his ever-ready temper.

My father says a girl who fails to marry is veering from
God’s plan- that’s what he’s got against college for Adah
and me, besides the wasted expense- and I’m sure what
he says is true. But without college, how will I learn
anything of any account to teach others? And what redblooded American boy will look twice at a Geography
whiz with scabs on her knees, when he could have a
Sweater Girl? I suppose I’ll just have to wait and see.
God must know his arithmetic. He’d plan it out well
enough to plunk down a husband for every wife that he
aims for to have one. If the Lord hasn’t got a boyfriend
lined up for me to marry, that’s his business (149-150).


Leah Price is a round character. Leah constantly struggles with
herself for being different. She feels out of place because she is
gifted in school and is a tomboy. Throughout the book, she tries the
hardest to earn her father’s approval, but each time she fails
miserably. She follows her father around, being extra careful of his
temper, but her attempts of being wanted get ignored time and time
again. She feels that if she could completely earn God’s approval
that her father would fully love her. Since her father never shows
his love, Leah feels as if God doesn’t fully approve of her either.
Leah is also a first-person narrator. Throughout the book, we are
told parts of the story through her point-of-view. We are welcomed
into her thoughts and her internal stories through her first-hand
conceptions.

The point-of-view in this novel switches
between characters in each chapter. However, it
remains in first-person narrative. The book is
told from the perspectives of Orleanna Price,
Leah Price, Rachel Price, Adah Price, and Ruth
May Price. Throughout the whole novel, indirect
characterization is the means of how the reader
gets to know the different narrators.

I would be no different from the next one, if I hadn’t paid my own
little part in blood. I trod on Africa without a thought, straight from
our family’s divinely inspired beginning to our terrible end. In
between, in the midst of all those steaming nights and days darkly
colored, smelling of earth, I believe there lay some marrow of honest
instruction. Sometimes I can nearly say what it was. If I could, I
would fling it at others, I’m afraid, at risk to their ease. I’d slide this
awful story off my shoulders, flatten it, sketch out our crimes like a
failed battle plan and shake it in the faces of my neighbors, who are
wary of me already. But Africa shifts under my hands, refusing to
be party to failed relations. Refusing to be any place at all, or any
thing but itself: the animal kingdom making hay in the kingdom of
glory. So there it is, take your place. Leave nothing for a haunted old
bat to use for disturbing the peace. Nothing, save for this life of her
own (9-10).

Orleanna’s perspective is different from all of the other
narrators. She tells her story by reflecting back on her
time in the Congo. The reader gets his or her insight by
looking intently at Orleanna’s regret and thoughts of her
time spent in Africa. The dialogue through which
Orleanna speaks is more developed and more insightful
than that of the girls. Orleanna often foreshadows parts
of the story through her thoughts and reflections.

The day after my birthday, Axleroot came over and we
went for a walk. I more or less knew to expect him. His
routine was to fly out to his mystery destination on
Thursdays, come back Mondays, and come to our house
on Tuesdays. So I’d put on my tulip-tailored poisongreen suit, which has now officially faded to poison-drab
and lost two of its buttons. For the first half of last year I
prayed for a full length mirror, and the second half I
praised the Lord we didn’t have one. Still, who cares if
my suit wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t a date, just a makebelieve date for appearances. I planned to walk with him
to the village and not a speck farther (288).

Rachel’s perspective is told in the same manner
as her sisters’. She tells her part of the story as if
she were at the Congo. Rachel allows the reader
into her thoughts and also offers the reader
insight through dialogue. Rachel’s point-of-view,
along with those of her sisters, has a tendency to
be one-sided and opinionated. Rachel’s story is
told through the perspective of a teenage girl
who was forced to relocate to Africa, and
through her tone the reader can easily identify
how she is feeling at all times.

The church building, scene of our recent fest, resides at
one end of the village. At the other end, our own house.
And so when the Price family strolls to church we are
able en route to peer straight into each and every
villager’s house. Every house has only a single square
room and a thatched roof, under which might dwell the
likes of Robinson Crusoe. But no one here stays under a
roof. It is in the front yards- all the world’s a stage of
hard red dirt under bare foot- where tired thin women in
every thinkable state of dress and despair poke sticks
into their little fires and cook (31).

The setting of this book is mainly in different parts of
Africa, more specifically, the Belgian Congo. For the
main parts of the book the Price family is in a little
African village called Kilanga. By the end of the novel,
the girls are living in different places ranging from
Africa to Atlanta. The geographical location of the book
plays a huge role in the characters’ lives. The extreme
poverty and death that the girls have to experience in
Africa plays a huge part in how the girls grow and
change throughout the novel. The location also causes
the reader to feel somewhat gloomy throughout the
whole book. Since the Price family moved from a Baptist
community in Georgia and relocated to the Wild African
Congo, a lot of their problems and conflicts trace back to
that rough transition of cultures.

Fifteen years after it all happened, I sat by my radio in
Atlanta listening to Senator Church and the special
committee hearings on the Congo. I dug my nails into
my palms till I’d pierce my own flesh. Where had I
been? Somewhere else entirely? Of the coupe, in August,
I’m sure we’d understood nothing. From the next five
months of Lumumba’s imprisonment, escape, and
recapture, I recall-what? The hardships of washing and
cooking in a drought. A humiliating event in the church,
and rising contentions in the village. Ruth May’s illness,
of course. And a shocking scrap with Leah , who wanted
to go hunting with the men. I was occupied so entirely
by each day , I felt detached by from anything so large as
a month or a year. History didn’t cross my mind. Now it
does (323).
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The time period of the book is from 1959 to
1986. The time period is significant to the novel
because it helps the reader better understand the
Price family’s reasoning on their strict views on
religion and their actions. The time period is also
a significant aspect to the book because it goes
hand in hand with the African culture
historically.

“Tata Ndu asked you to relay all that did he?”
“Yes he did.”
“And do you agree that I am leading your fellow villagers to partake of the meat of a
rotten corpse?”
Anatole paused. You could see him trying out different words in his head. Finally
he said , “Reverend Price, do I not stand beside you in your church every Sunday,
translating the words of the Bible and your sermons?”
My father did not exactly say yes or no to that, though of course it was true. But
that’s Father, to a tee. He won’t usually answer a question straight. He always acts
like there’s a trap somewhere and he’s not about to get caught in it. Instead he asked,
“And, Anatole, do you not now sit at my table, translating the words of Tata Ndu’s
bible of false idolatry and his sermon aimed at me in particular.”
“Yes, sir, that is what I am doing.”
Father laid his knife and fork crossways on his plate and took a breath, satisfied
he’d gained the upper hand. Father specializes in the upper hand. “Brother Anatole, I
pray every day for understanding and patience in leading brother Ndu to our church,”
he said. “Perhaps I should pray for you as well,” (129-130).

In the novel Nathan Price causes conflict by
stubbornly trying to enforce Christianity on the
people of the Congo. Nathan never considers the
difference in cultures and is completely set in his
ways. Christianity is not welcomed as warmly as
Nathan would have liked by the people of the
Congo and their leader Tata Ndu. This causes an
immediate growing conflict throughout the
novel.

“It was at the end of a dry season, Orleanna,” he snapped. “When it’s
hot enough the puddles dry up.” You brainless nitwit, he did not need to
add.
“ But how on earth did they run it without a fanbelt?” our mother
asked, understanding by the Reverend’s irritation that she was expected
to return to the subject at hand. She leaned forward to offer him
biscuits from the bone-china platter, which she sometimes, secretly,
cradled like a baby after the washing and drying. Today she gave its rim
a gentle stroke before folding her hands in submission to father’s will.
She was wearing a jaunty shirtwaist, white with small red and blue
semaphore flags. It had been her outermost dress when we came over.
Its frantic little banners seemed to be signaling disaster now, on account
of Mama Tataba’s vigorous washings in the river.
He leaned forward to give us the full effect of his red eyebrows and
prominent jaw. “Elephant grass,” he pronounced triumphantly.
We sat frozen, the food in our mouths momentarily unchewed (7475).

Nathan causes conflict again in the lives of his
family. By causing his family to feel as if they are
walking on thin ice and by never showing any sign
of love and emotion towards them, he is forming a
widening rift between himself and his family. The
girls commonly refer to him as “Reverend” which
puts his role as a father on a less personal level.
Nathan constantly makes it clear that his wife and
kids will never live up to his high standards or those
standards he claims God sets for all. By doing this
his family slowly pushes him away from them and
resents him even more.

We would all have to escape Africa by a different
route. Some of us are in the ground now and some
are above it, but we’re all women, made of the same
scarred earth. I study my grown daughters now, for
signs they are resting in some kind of peace. How
did they manage? When I remain hounded by
judgment? The eyes in the trees open onto my
dreams. In daylight they watch my crooked hands
while I scratch the soil in my damp garden. What do
you want from me? When I raise my crazy old eyes
and talk to myself, what do you want me to tell you?
Oh, little beast, little favorite. Can’t you see I died
as well (89).
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Another underlying conflict in the novel is
Africa verses the Price family. The unknown
wilderness and the diseases that the Congo
carries is a conflict in itself. The African Congo
starts to take on somewhat of a human form and
the girls, especially Orleanna, view it as a living,
breathing beast. The Congo constantly thrusts
the harshness of sickness and death at the Price
family and awaits patiently to claim its next
victim.

If I could reach backward somehow to give father just one
gift, it would be the simple human relief of knowing you’ve
done wrong, and living through it. Poor father, who was just
one of a million men who never did catch on. He stamped
me with a belief in justice, then drenched me in culpability,
and I wouldn’t wish such torment on even a mosquito. But
that exacting, tyrannical God of his has left me for good
(525).

On the same August day, this is all I knew: the
pain in my household seemed plenty large enough to
fill the whole world. Ruth May was slipping away
into her fever. And it was Rachel’s seventeenth
birthday. I was wrapping up green glass earrings in
tissue paper, hoping to make some small peace with
my eldest child, while I tried to sponge the fire out
of my youngest. And President Eisenhower was
right then sending his orders to take over the Congo.
Imagine that. His household was the world, and he’d
finished making up his mind about things (320).

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver is about
how people learn to live and deal with regret and reveals
that each person has to cope differently with it. Since the
novel is narrated by all women, it shows guilt related to
women’s consciences and emotions. Throughout the
novel the girls feel continuous regret over the fact that
they let their father down time and time again. The girls
also have to learn to cope with the death of a loved one
and a place they used to call home. Another thing they
regret is how they took the easiness and freedom of life
back in Georgia for granted. The girls also feel guilt over
the role they played, along with the United States, in the
tragedies Africa faced. Throughout the whole book, guilt
creeps up into the lives of the Price women and slowly
turns their world upside down.
Kingsolver, Barbara. The Poisonwood Bible.
Harper Collins Publishers: New York, 1998.