The story of the Poisonwood Bible is a description that tells the views of five noble women that represent Christian faith, of their experience in Africa. It takes place in Congo Africa in 1959, when the Baptist minister, Nathan Price, takes his family on a mission to diffuse their religious aspects to save the unenlightened souls of Africa. On this journey, Nathan Price carries his wife and four daughters to help endure their beliefs to the people in Africa. The story begins with the view point of the wife Orleanna who accepts all the beliefs and plans her husband stands for and says on this missionary trip. The Poisonwood Bible also introduces the daughters her will be telling the readers their view points on how they feel about the missionary …show more content…
matters of Congo Africa. Additionally, their oldest daughter, Rachel, is a typical fifteen year old girl who cares mostly about looks and lives the teenage life. However, their two other fourteen year old daughters named Leah and Adah, who looks at the world differently than their oldest sister Rachel. Leah observes the mission as the same view point as her father’s religious faith and looks at the journey enthusiastically. Leah's twin Adah a cripple and mute by birth, but also a brilliant observer, merely views the move, as she does all of life, with a wry and cynical detachment. Five year old adventurer Ruth May is both excited and frightened. One thing that the women share, however, is the unwavering faith that they are carrying with them, to Africa as a culture and as a religion far superior to the one already existing in the village of Kilanga, and that they will therefore instantly be masters of their new domain. These sharply observant girls, who arrive in the Congo with racial preconceptions forged in 1950s Georgia, will be marked in surprisingly different ways by their father's intractable mission, and by Africa itself. Ultimately each must strike her own separate path to salvation. By turns, in the novel, they describe their lives in a remote Congolese village and the fortunes of Nathan's mission to convert the Congolese. These sharply observant girls, who arrive in the Congo with racial preconceptions forged in 1950s Georgia, will be marked in surprisingly different ways by their father's intractable mission, and by Africa itself. Ultimately each must strike her own separate path to salvation. Kingsolver implies that we are all in the position of the "conqueror's wife." We did not perpetrate the crimes ourselves, but we are inextricably connected to those who did, and we have benefited enormously from the crimes. Like the conqueror's wife, we sit passively by as the violence is done, and though we might not approve of it, we do not decline to reap the benefits, nor do we sever our connection to the perpetrator. There is no one right answer to the question, "how should we live with the burden of guilt?" To pose just one answer and claim that it is the correct one would be narrow-minded and uninteresting.
This is why Kingsolver chooses to have the story told by five separate narrators. Each narrator represents a different answer to the question, "how should we live with the burden of guilt?" covering the spectrum from Orleanna's complete paralysis to Rachel's nonchalant refusal to even accept the burden. In between these extremes there are Leah, who responds with an active attempt to right the wrongs in the world, and Adah, who responds with an attempt to understand and make sense of the world on its most fundamental level. Even Ruth May, whose death is the cause of the more personal level of guilt felt by these women, represents a point on the spectrum of guilt, coming at the question with an all-accepting spirituality. Additionally, the story fools the readers proclaiming that the story is coming to an end and everything is going to be a joyous time again. Instead, Things go from bad to worse when the people of Kilanga hold their own election on what they should do religiously. The people voted on whether or not they should accept Jesus Christ as their personal god or if the shouldn’t. The people ended up deciding not to accept him because it could destroy their culture and other aspects of their nature. For instance, a dry spell hits Kilanga and the people begin to starve. So, the …show more content…
people of the village organize a large hunt to gather food for the people. It just occurs that Leah was a part of the hunt to help out and this creates problems. Moreover, Leah angers the men of Kilanga when she participates in the village hunt, since she is a female and that is against the Kalanga’s’ culture. Furious at her blatant assault to their patriarchy (and probably because it takes away the pride of the men in the village), the village witch doctor, Tata Kuvudundu, puts a snake in the chicken coop as a warning. This threat was sent to Nathan and Anatole in front of their huts and when they forced it to leave it bites Ruth May, and she dies. Orleanna makes a burial shroud for Ruth May, puts all the family's belongings in the yard for anyone to take, and leaves, taking her daughters but leaving her husband behind. Mbote, good Reverend Price! Mbote is Congolese for both hello and good-bye. In this instance, it means "good riddance." At the end, the family's story splits and everyone continues on with their lives in different directions. Orleanna and Adah return to America, where Adah goes to college and becomes a doctor, as well Adah losing her limp. Leah marries Anatole and stays in Africa, fighting against injustice and making microscopic progress, if any, against the Congo's corrupt American-installed regime. Rachel runs away with Eeben Axelroot. After a series of failed marriages, divorces, and widowhoods, she finds herself in possession of The Equatorial, a hotel which Rachel runs like a country. "In Congo, it seems the land owns the people." Leah, pg. (283). Leah’s casual statement is a fact of life in the Congo and one of the primary themes of the novel. The land does "own" the people in a way that demands the observance of a way of life that is difficult for pampered Americans to comprehend. Those who cannot live by its rules are doomed to be destroyed by it, nor can they ever completely escape its effects. Leah hears that her father was burned to death by angry villagers who blamed him when a young girl actually was eaten by a crocodile. Ruth May's spirit remains in the trees of the Congo, watching her family as they go through their lives, imploring them to forgive each other, to forgive themselves, and to continue on with their lives. Barbara Kingsolver wrote numerous amounts of books relating to the way people live their lives in the United States and how it impacts other nations and countries around us such as Africa.
Kingsolver only gives the reader five possibilities out of an infinite number of options of how the people’s reaction towards guilt impact the way people decide to live. Since there is also a sixth Price in this story, Nathan Price, the audience (readers) may wonder why Nathan is not given a voice as well, so that he too can present us with a possible response to guilt. In my opinion, I believe Nathan's relation to guilt, however, is very different from the relation Kingsolver wants to explore here. Nathan is not the conqueror's wife, but the conqueror himself. He is not the passive partner in crime, but the perpetrator. Nathan represents the active forces of evil for which we now feel the burden. He is a stand in for the United States government, the Belgian colonialists, the thousands of arrogant and destructive missionaries, and all others whose blind arrogance and greed wreaked havoc on a continent. Nathan himself never speaks to us, though his sermonizing voice echoes through the novel. He is excluded because he resists all sympathy, he refuses to admit to doubt or weakness. "Our father speaks for all of us," observes Adah pg. (32), and so the voices of his family are a kind of descant to his mission. Telling a story in a sequence of monologues by different characters is a
surprisingly old novelistic technique. It was pioneered in the 19th century by Willkie Collins in The Moonstone, a crime mystery in which different characters spoke in turn as if giving evidence in a trial. In the early 20th century it was associated with some of the pioneers of modernism – Virginia Woolf in The Waves or William Faulkner in As I Lay Dying. The Poisonwood Bible carries memories of Faulkner: the family comes originally from Mississippi, like Faulkner's, and their locutions have a Southern twang ("I was sore at father all right … But it was plain to see he was put out, too, something fierce"). Kingsolver does not, however, attempt so closely to follow the patterns of everyday speech. The voices of her characters are as much written as spoken. The convention has evolved to allow us to imagine narrative voices as expressions of different characters' thoughts. Kingsolver describes how she read reams of magazines from the late 1950s and 60s in order to fabricate the idiom for American girls of the period to represent America’s children. The clear purpose of the multifocal narrative is to let you piece together the apparently strange world of the Congo from these different accounts. Until Leah befriends Anatole, the young man who translates her father's sermons as he is performing them, we only glimpse the Congolese, we never exactly hear them. Yet the more the Prices speak, the odder they seem, and the more intelligible and reasonable seem the habits of the supposedly benighted people they have come to instruct. In conclusion, The Poisonwood Bible brought a different aspect on how I look at the world today. It gave me clarification that in the world we are living now continues to want power and authority. It doesn’t even matter if what faith you are people always want to be higher than whose ever in charge, in this case it was God. Although, the book had a lot of difficult things to comprehend and understand, it is an interesting book. I like how the different voices are not just voices of an era; they represent approaches to Africa. The Baptist father's story has been told by countless missionaries; he's trying to conquer the continent. Rachel tries to make Africa into America, Adah tries to analyze it, and Ruth tries to befriend it and ignores its dangers. Leah is the only one who has children; she's the only one whose approach is fertile. She approaches Africa, with curiosity and love, and uses both her American past and African present to understand the continent and its place in what she knows of the world. Orleanna simply can't adapt because she can't reconcile her familiar roles as a Christian, Southern woman, and wife with survival in the Congo. Like her husband, she can't survive and she can't ensure the survival of her children in Africa. She's haunted by her time there, and her guilt over the later events in the book represents the guilt of white people for their actions in Africa.
In the novel, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, the character Leah Price’s psychological and moral traits were shaped by her psychical and geographical surroundings. The African Congo impacts Leah in ways only one could imagine. Leah’s character sifts through life hanging by the seam of others coat tails until she examines herself from the inside out and no longer lives through others but now lives for herself.
In the novel The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, Nathan Price takes his wife and four daughters to the Congo to spread Christianity. When the Price family arrives in the Congo, they are the only American family there, and there are few people who speak English. The family feels out of place and unprepared to live in the drastically different village. Rachel is the character that feels cut off from home the most. Rachel’s experience with exile is very hard on her, but in the end, it has a positive impact on her life.
Throughout the novel, All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren, the characters are constantly feeling the effects of their action later in the book. Every one of their sinister, sketchy actions were dealt with again later in the book and not in pleasant circumstance. As Cass Mastern had figured out:
Setting: Without the setting taking place after post-war Holocaust in Germany, the theme of guilt would most likely not have been possible since the characters feelings of guilt come from, in a sense, the Nazis and the Holocaust.
The Poisonwood Bible is the story of an evangelical Baptist preacher named Nathan Price who uproots his wife and four daughters from the modern culture of America and moves them to the Kilanga Village in the Belgian Congo as missionaries. He is bullheaded and obstinate in all his ways. His approach is inflexible, unsympathetic, and unaccepting of the culture and customs of the people of Kilanga. Nathan Price exemplifies the words of Romans 2:4 that says, “Or do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing the goodness of God leads you to repentance?” He did not share the goodness of God, but sought to spread his uncompromising pious agenda. Instead of leading people to God he turned them away.
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver is a work of historical fiction. The novel is based the Congo in 1959, while it was still under Belgian control. Nathan Price is a southern Baptist preacher from Bethlehem, Georgia who uproots his family, consisting of wife and three daughters, and takes them on a mission trip to Kilanga. Orleanna Price, Nathan’s wife, narrates the beginning of each book within the novel. Rachel, Leah, Adah, and Ruth May rotate the narration throughout each book. Rachel is the oldest Price child, and high materialistic. She refuses to accept the ways of the Congo, believing that she is better than everyone simply because of where she had her start in life. Leah is the next oldest, and she is a self-proclaimed tomboy. She likes to climb trees and practically worships at the feet of her father. Adah is the handicapped one, with a physical deformity. However, this deformity does not limit her, instead making her the smartest of the Price girls. Ruth May is the baby of the family, and has not yet lost the childhood innocence that she views the world with. Barbara Kingsolver uses a very interesting narrative style in the novel, switching between four narrators between the ages of five and fifteen, who are all female. Kingsolver's use of multiple narrative perspectives serve to amplify life in the Congo during the early 1960s through characterization, religion, and politics.
Vengeance plays a key role in causing the mass hysteria of the Salem Witch Trials. Abigail Williams, who?s probably most to blame for the trials, acts out of revenge. She and John Proctor have had an affair and when Elizabeth Proctor finds out, she throws Abigail out of their house. During the trials, Abigail is still in love with John Proctor and goes after Elizabeth out of vengeance. Elizabeth tries to explain this to John, who is in disbelief: she ?thinks to kill me, then to take my place? (61). Abigail?s main motive for destroying Elizabeth is revenge for being thrown out of the house and for having John Proctor, the man that she loves. Another character who seeks revenge is Mrs. Putnam, who has had seven children die shortly after childbirth and blames her midwife, who has many children. Rebecca Nurse is charged ?for the marvelous and supernatural murder of Goody Putnam?s babies? (71). The trials are an opportunity for Ann Putnam to seek vengeance against Rebecca for having healthy children and grandchild...
Hale takes this job to a personal level when the the crisis takes a turn for the worse. He pleads with the people convicted of witchcraft to confess. He feels he is responsible for their lives because his purpose was to rid the town of witchcraft, not innocent lives. He beholds himself a failure when he cannot convince the accused to confess. His well justified pride is broken. He came into this village like a bride groom to his beloved, bearing gifts of high religion; the very crowns of holy law I brought, and what I touched with my bright confidence, it died; and where I turned the eye of my great faith, blood flowed up. He urges Elizabeth not ot let her pride interfere with her duty as a wife, as it did with his own duty.
There are many ways to decide what makes a man guilty. In an ethical sense, there is more to guilt than just committing the crime. In Charles Brockden Browns’ Wieland, the reader is presented with a moral dilemma: is Theodore Wieland guilty of murdering his wife and children, even though he claims that the command came from God, or is Carwin guilty because of his history of using persuasive voices, even though his role in the Wieland family’s murder is questionable? To answer these questions, one must consider what determines guilt, such as responsibility, motives, consequences, and the act itself. No matter which view is taken on what determines a man’s guilt, it can be concluded that Wieland bears the fault in the murder of Catharine Wieland and her children.
The division of good is decided upon by reader and character according to their perspective. For the reader, the sympathy is usually pointed towards the victim of the situation, but this play twists the power balance between victim and attacker. It makes the characters believe the victim is the prosecutor, and the prosecutor is the victim. The consequences of this role reversal involve the incrimination of a character with profoundly good morals, Rebecca Nurse. In the beginning, Rebecca was recognized by Hale when he says to her, “It’s strange how I knew you, but I suppose you look as such a good soul should.” (Miller 34) Rebecca Nurse is condemned in a time of great hysteria. Even she, a character who seems good and does nothing but good, is caught in the blasphemous whirlwind that shakes Salem.
Also important to the play is how Arthur Miller depicts how one selfish, evil person like Abigail Williams can bring others down and make others follow her to commit evil acts. These evil acts affect even the most honest people in the town like John and Elizabeth Proctor, and Rebecca Nurse who cannot fight the accusations made against them by those following Abigail. Those following Abigail are considered to be holy men that are full of honesty and justice, but the play shows that even those who are thought to be respectable and right, like people of government or community leaders can bring death to innocent people if they are driven by something wrong. II. Plot: The plot begins with the inciting incident where Rev. Parris finds his niece Abigail Williams and his daughter Betty along with his slave Tituba doing some dance in the forest.
Ian McEwan illustrates a profound theme that builds details throughout the novel Atonement, the use of guilt and the quest for atonement are used with in the novel to convey the central dynamic aspect in the novel. McEwan constructs the emotion of guilt that is explored through the main character, Briony Tallis. The transition of child and entering the adult world, focus on the behavior and motivation of the young narrator Briony. Briony writes passages that entail her attempt to wash away her guilt as well find forgiveness for her sins. In which Briony ruined the lives and the happiness of her sister, Cecilia, and her lover Robbie. The reality of the events, attempts to achieve forgiveness for her actions. She is unable to understand the consequences of the actions as a child but grows to develop the understanding of the consequence with age. McEwan exemplifies an emotional novel that alters reality as he amplifies the creative acts of literature. In this essay I will be arguing that, the power of guilt prevents people from moving on from obstacles that hold them in the past.
Guilt is one of the emotions that explains why these two characters are so different. It shows us that although they have the same ambition and motivation for the tasks they want to complete, their beliefs, morals, and opinions make the characters, their actions, and their lives completely different.
Ideology is a motif that is portrayed. The characters all go off the same moral belief of religion in the play. This idea is dangerous and is the main reason for the deaths due to sinning. Another Motif showed is lying. It seems that almost everyone in The Crucible lie and each lie effects another’s life. “How were you instructed in your life? Do you not know that God damns all liars? (She cannot speak.) Or is it now that you lie? (Miller). Danforth is calling out Mary Warren for changing up here story so much. This goes back to the motif of lies and ideology because lying is a sin that is punished with death most of the times. A theme of the play is that even being honest does not always help out. Proctor experiences with this because even though he came clean about the affair and tried to call out Abigail he was not believed and still send to be hung. “On the last night of my joy, some eight months past. She used to serve me in my house, sir. (He has to clamp his jaw to keep from weeping.) A man may think God sleeps, but God sees everything, I know it now. I beg you, sir, I beg you—see her what she is” (Miller). Proctor is admitting to the affair and begging the court to see that Abigail is a whore are nothing she says can be
In William Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth, different characters deal with the guilt they feel in different ways. Lady Macbeth’s guilt pushes her into madness, and while Macbeth’s guilt does the same, it also pushes him to commit further atrocities. However, Macduff uses his guilt over his family’s death to avenge them. The difference in the way in which they deal with their guilt catalyze many deaths, including those of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Guilt and accountability therefore are key elements of Macbeth.