The Morality Of The Bible In The Poisonwood Bible By Barbara Kingsolver

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“We came from Bethlehem, Georgia, bearing Betty Crocker cake mixes into the jungle. My sisters and I were all counting on having one birthday apiece during our twelve-month mission. And heaven knows… they won’t have Betty Crocker in the Congo.” (Kingsolver 13). In The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver tells the story of a fictional family, the Price’s, uprooting their lives in America to spread the Christian word to the Congo. Their father is a preacher and it’s his mission to convert all the people of the Congo to Christianity, and his family has to come along for the ride. The Price family is being pushed into a culture that is nothing like their own, and some of them have a little more difficulty adjusting than others, namely, Rachel Rebeccah Price. Rachel’s difficulty adjusting to
They may think it is horrible, but they flip the channel and go on with their lives, they think “better them than me” and then they never consider it again. As long as it isn’t happening to her, she doesn’t give it a second thought. The introductory quote about Betty Crocker cake mixes serves to show that her family starts out their lives in the Congo just a little bit like Rachel. “Getting here with even the bare minimum was a trial… Pan American Airline would only allow forty-four pounds to be carried across the ocean… we were sixty-one pounds over… even without Rachel’s beauty aids” (Kingsolver 14-15). They go into this poverty stricken country with frivolous items. “We struck out for Africa carrying all our excess baggage on our bodies, under our clothes. Also we had clothes under our clothes… The other goods, tools, cake-mix boxes… tucked… under our waistbands, surrounding us in a clanking armor” (Kingsolver 15). In America they may have needed some of those things in their daily lives, but in Africa they do not. These people, adults and children both, run around naked, living with

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