Who Is Leah's Character In The Poisonwood Bible

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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. The stunning character Leah Price is age fourteen and a half when she and her family enter the African Congo. She is the middle child of four sisters and is the lucky twin. Her twin Adah was born with a deformity to the right hemisphere of her brain meaning the entire left side is non-functioning. Leah is very intelligent, passionate, …show more content…

She is extremely prideful and blindly enslaved to her father, attached to him like a parasite. Leah exhibits a tomboyish personality that immediately shocks the Congolese peoples. Her tomboyish characteristics are illuminated when she states “I’ve always been the one for outdoor chores anyway, burning the trash and the weeding, while my sisters squabble about the dishes and such (pg. 35).” Instantly Leah is set apart from her sisters, the readers seeing that Leah is a lover of nature and a very special treasure to watch closely throughout the novel. “I knew God’s scale to be vast and perfectly accurate… I vowed to work hard for His favor, surpassing all others in my devotion to turning the soil for God’s glory (pg.36).” Her faith is strong, never dwindling. She loves God and is dedicated to serving Him instead of others, yet she ultimately praises her father Nathan as well. Leah spends all her time following in her father’s footsteps. She always tags along and tries to help him but he rarely notices her. She loves the God her father serves and is after all the only one who cares to be on Nathan’s righteous side. From the

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