The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

First published: 1998

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Political allegory

Time of plot: 1959 to 1980’s

Locale: Kilanga, the Belgian Congo; Bethlehem, Georgia

Principal characters

• Nathan Price, a Christian missionary
• Orleanna Price, his wife
• Rachel, ,
• Leah, ,
• Adah, and
• Ruth May, their daughters
• Mama Bekwa Tataba, a housekeeper for the Price family
• Brother Fyntan Fowles, a missionary
• Anatole Ngemba, a village teacher
• Eeben Axelroot, a bush pilot

The Story:

The Price family, in 1959, journeys to the Belgian Congo from their home in Bethlehem, Georgia, as Christian missionaries. The Reverend Nathan Price and his family, loosely affiliated with Southern Baptist sponsors, arrive at the village of Kilanga with no understanding of what they will face. They know nothing of their living conditions or the types of challenges they will encounter as Nathan preaches his spiritual message.

Orleanna, Nathan’s wife, and their daughters Rachel (fifteen years old), Leah and Adah (twelve-year-old twins), and Ruth May (six years old), tend to their authoritarian father, who sees himself as the guide, guardian, and absolute ruler of his family of females. Their sole duty is to make Nathan’s life in Kilanga tolerable by creating his meals and keeping his home. He liberally hands down advice and often-cruel, even sadistic, punishment, forcing the girls to, among other things, copy long passages of Scripture to make amends for their sins or hitting them or their mother when they displease him. He is a figure to be feared, and his only connection to his family is relaying the condemnations of an angry God for giving in to human weakness.

Each daughter has her own perspective on Africa, Nathan, and the family’s mission. Rachel, longing only for a sweet-sixteen party, abhors the heat and dirt of the Congo, not to mention its distance from the United States. She has nowhere to go, no friends, and no interest in what is around her except as it furthers her desire to feel pretty or act more grown up. Leah, thoughtful and longing for righteousness, tries hard to win Nathan’s approval and blessing. Imperfect Adah, suffering from hemiplegia (paralysis of half the body), carries on a consistent internal monologue but restricts her speech to palindromes; she also limps when she walks. Ruth May takes in the world around her with characteristically childlike attention to details, including facts about her family and the games and language of the village children. She inadvertently reveals her father’s character by remarking on his nastiness and dislikes.

Orleanna complies with Nathan’s demands as well as she can in a kitchen where her Betty Crocker cake mixes only serve to highlight the distance she and her family are from the United States or any other modern world. She tries to learn something about the local ways of managing food from Mama Bekwa Tataba, the family’s housekeeper. Each day Orleanna faces the taxing work of building fires, hauling water, preparing as-fresh-as-possible food, and presenting a decent meal at noon. The laundry and other housekeeping chores, even with Tataba’s help, prove daunting, and Orleanna begins to lose her stamina along with her faith in the rightness of her and Nathan’s calling.

Nathan disdains help of any kind, including advice about how to set out plants to protect them from floods and how to speak the local language. Instead, he makes a fool of himself. Ignoring Mama Tataba’s gardening habits, Nathan loses all his plants in a deluge. Perhaps his most arrogant offense is his refusal to use a translator and thereby mispronounce the words of the Kikongo language. His faulty pronunciation assures his congregation that Jesus is love, and that Jesus will make them itch like poison, as does the poisonwood tree. Thinking he is proclaiming God’s love, Nathan completely undermines his message. Tragically, and none the wiser, he smugly boasts of his ability to talk to the Congolese in their own tongue.

As a final blow to his credibility and ability to reach anyone in the village, Nathan insists on baptizing children in a crocodile-infested river. This rite terrifies them with images of death and impending doom—several local children have recently disappeared, snatched by crocodiles in the same river. Similar missteps and a patronizing attitude foster miscommunication and damage Nathan’s relations with the villagers.

Brother Fyntan Fowles tries to help Nathan with his mission, but Nathan disdains him because he has married a Congolese woman and lives a kind of itinerant life. Fowles has given up both the form and message of Western Christianity in an attempt to do some good for the people who trust him.

Anatole Ngemba, the village teacher, is a regular part of the Price home as a tutor for the girls. With him they tackle academics; perhaps as important, they learn from him the history of the freedom movement in pre-independence Congo. Leah quickly figures out he can be trusted. They become fast friends.

Orleanna wilts under the pressure of the grueling daily work she must complete just to survive in the often-hostile landscape and climate, and the girls fall into their habitual roles. Rachel complains and seeks a way to be a “normal” teenager, somehow, in a place she despises. Adah keeps her own counsel but thinks constantly about the foolishness and cruelty of her father’s approach to life and faith. Leah slowly comes to grips with her father’s faltering role as a worthy authority figure as well as her own growing sense of morality. Ruth May plays with the village children and bonds with them without pretense.

Ruth May is bitten by a green mamba snake. Confusion about what had happened to her makes it impossible for anyone to act quickly enough to save her life. She dies, and Orleanna descends into a nightmare of grief and longing. She faces the loss of her daughter and then finally admits Nathan’s overbearing cruelty against the family and his manipulation. She no longer feels obligated to her husband.

The Congo is thrust into chaos during its movement for independence from Belgium, marking the end of colonial domination for an entire people and also the collapse of Nathan’s patriarchal dominance. Orleanna abandons him, placing all her trust in her abilities to survive and save her remaining children. In the flight to freedom, Rachel flies off with Eeben Axelroot, a bush pilot, to begin her life with him in Africa; they soon marry. Orleanna manages to leave the Congo with Adah, and Leah marries Anatole and supports his resistance to the newly corrupt regime.

Nathan, years after his family had left him and had established lives of their own, wanders like a crazy man, rambling and alienating everyone he encounters. He dies alone, burning to death in a freakish accident while villagers stand by, reluctant to intervene. His death is a just finale to his brutish behavior toward his wife and daughters and toward the Congolese he tried to intimidate into accepting Christianity.

Orleanna, with Adah, resides in the United States, leading a quiet life of musings, grief, and regret. She comes to terms with the course her life has taken, and she develops a way to forgive herself and continue living. She finds solace in the land and plants. Adah devotes herself to medical research that is focused on problems endemic to Africa.

Bibliography

DeMarr, Mary Jean. Barbara Kingsolver: A Critical Companion. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999. This study is a detailed overview of Kingsolver’s works, through the late 1990’s. The chapter on The Poisonwood Bible concentrates on various approaches to the novel, with detailed analyses of plots, characters, and genre readings. Also includes the chapter “Politics and Genres.”

Demory, Pamela A. “Into the Heart of Light: Barbara Kingsolver Rereads Heart of Darkness.” Conradians 34, no. 3 (Fall, 2002): 181-195. An insightful comparison of The Poisonwood Bible and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1902).

Koza, Kimberly A. “The Africa of Two Western Women Writers: Barbara Kingsolver and Margaret Laurence.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Literature 44, no. 3 (Spring, 2003): 284-295. Careful look at how The Poisonwood Bible characterizes complex African issues through the eyes of the Price family women. Includes a comparison to Margaret Laurence’s books and methods.

Oonibene, Elaine R. “The Missionary Position: Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible.” College Literature 30, no. 3 (Summer, 2003): 19-23. A discussion of colonial and postcolonial excesses of Western nations that use religious rhetoric to justify the ways they intervene in and rearrange the cultures of African nations, the Congo in this case.

Snodgrass, Mary Ellen. Barbara Kingsolver: A Literary Companion. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2004. Alphabetical entries include analyses of characters, dates, historical figures and events, allusions, literary motifs, and themes from Kingsolver’s work. An excellent resource for studies of Kingsolver.

York, R. A. The Extension of Life: Fiction and History in the American Novel. Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2003. York examines the “complementary tendencies” in the fiction of American writers, including Kingsolver, to document history while balancing creativity, to be true to facts while maintaining “self-conscious fabulation.” Also examines works by Joyce Carol Oates, Bernard Malamud, Saul Bellow, Truman Capote, Toni Morrison, Jane Smiley, and others.