The Poisonwood Bible, or The termite-Eaten Bible

The Poisonwood Bible is a book of contrasting strengths and weaknesses. The strengths of this book are brilliant, but the weaknesses are almost painfully apparent in some cases. In at least one case, a weakness in the book becomes a flaw, which becomes a ‘bur in the side’ of the reader, or at least it was to me.

Nathan Price goes to Africa as a missionary not because he is a particularly giving man who feels it his responsibility to save people’s souls for their own good, but because of a “suspicion of his own cowardice…[and] how fiercely he felt the eye of God upon him” (197). Nathan, through his missionary work, is attempting to redeem himself in the eyes of God, not because of any true desire to help the Congolese. Orleanna and the girls are simply “washed up on a riptide of [his] confidence” (8), and follow him. Nathan is, to say the least, not a very good missionary. He fails to convert any of the local Kilangans, and towards the end of the book there is even a “vote for Jesus Christ…[as] God” (330), or not. When the votes are cast, and the results counted “Jesus Christ [loses], eleven to fifty-six” (334). Nathan also is described as abusive to his family, striking his wife and daughters, while preaching Jesus’ everlasting love. Each of Nathan’s daughters possesses a distinctly unique personality and voice, which lends different opinions and viewpoints to the book.

Ruth May, the youngest daughter, is bitten one morning by a Black Mamba snake, and dies almost instantly. This event leads to Orleanna and Adah leaving the Congo and returning to America, Rachel flying to South Africa to flit from one husband to another before inheriting a hotel from one, Leah staying in the Congo, and later moving to Angola with her husband Anatole (a Congolese man) and later having children, and the increasing insanity of Nathan, who is finally burned alive by the Congolese for insisting on taking “every child in the village down to the river and [baptizing] them” (486) after a recent accident involving the river caused the death of many children.

The greatest strength of the book is the development and growth of the characters throughout the story, mainly in reference to Rachel, Leah, and Adah. Another strength of this book is the ability Kingsolver has to bring events or passages to life. Kingsolver can translate a feeling, or an emotion from the mind or actions of a character into a very clear picture in the reader’s mind.

The best explanation for the growth of the different characters in The Poisonwood Bible is the passage of time itself: the book spans more than twenty-five years. During this time the Price girls mature both physically and mentally, and also change their viewpoints entirely on some subjects.

Leah, at the start of the book, describes herself as “a tomboy” (64) who “can’t see [herself] as anything but a missionary or a teacher or a farmer” (149). Towards the end of the book, Leah decides “[God] must think of [her] as a mother” (499). Leah makes the transition from a young girl who would rather “spend as much time as [she] can outdoors” (149) to a married mother who makes a living as best she can as a woman in Africa.

Leah also begins her story idolizing her father. She describes him as “tall as Goliath and pure of heart as David” (40), and decides a certain glare of the sun “gave him a fiendish look untrue to his nature’ (40). Leah looks at her father and sees a man who can do no wrong. She sees him as an extremely good person, and spends her days trying to be just like him. In sharp contrast, the night before Ruth May dies, Leah tells her sisters she is “going to go out there to help Nelson and [Nathan] can go straight to hell” (358). No longer does Leah look to her father for guidance in her life. Leah no longer cares what Nathan thinks of her actions, or respects him in any way. This displays a massive amount of growth within Leah’s character: a shift from blind faith and innocence of childhood to a more discerning and practical viewpoint. Leah, by the end of the book, has learned to look at her father’s actions and judge him as an adult, rather than as a child watching her father.

When Nathan dies and Leah is telling the story to her sisters, she becomes angry, not with the people who killed him, but at Nathan himself for being known for “turning himself into a crocodile and attacking children” (485). Nathan was killed because of a misunderstanding, but Leah blames him for “being belligerent about [being asked to leave the village]” (486). This shows how little Leah has come to care for her father through what she sees as despicable actions. Nathan was not in fact guilty for the deaths of any children, as the Congolese believed, but Leah nonetheless damns him for his pride and exonerates the Africans. Leah, who once liked “spending time with [her] father…much more than [she liked] doing anything else” (36) as a child, finally decides his murder was his own fault, and blames him for it instead of his killers.

Though some things changed about Leah, others stayed the same. Leah, on first arriving in the Congo, decides to “someday demonstrate to all of Africa how to grow crops!” (38). As an adult, Leah “[teaches] classes in nutrition, sanitation, and soybeans” (523). Some beliefs and opinions may change, but others never do. Leah decided as a young girl to help the African food crisis, and as an adult she puts the thought into action.

Her stay in Africa changes Adah, though unlike Leah she does not choose to remain there for the rest of her life. Adah begins life as a cripple, learns as an adult how to “walk without [her] slant” (492). She also loses her “ability to read in the old way” (492). Adah, though now physically whole, can never forget her old self, and feels as if she has lost something in the process. Adah, by being healed physically, has lost part of her intellectual self. In the Congo, her “two unmatched halves [added] up to more than one whole” (493), while “[in America] there was no good name for [her] gift, so it died without a proper ceremony” (493). The fact of Adah losing a part of herself as she gains another illustrates a very powerful idea: there is no gain without loss. In the Congo, the Prices lost Ruth May, but they gained knowledge and wisdom they otherwise wouldn’t have. Each Price girl, as well as Orleanna, carried away a great amount of experience and new outlooks on the world as a whole: at the price of Ruth May and their blissful innocence of many issues. Adah remembers her childhood, and the “energy [she] spent feeling betrayed” (532). She has moved beyond feeling betrayed, and sees the world as it is, rather than as she believes it to be, or should be. Adah, as did Leah, changed both physically and mentally.

Some things about Adah have stayed the same, however. She “write[s] poems at [her] kitchen table” (532) while she once found palindromes to have a “perfect, satisfying taste” (57). Adah also “still love[s] to read…[but] differently now that [she] is in [her] right mind” (532). She once “[read] a book front to back, [then] back to front” (57), and now still holds onto the memories of her old abilities. Adah has changed greatly mentally and physically, but each gain came with a price: originally her body for her mind, but now her mind for her body. Adah has gained and lost much in her growth from a young girl to a woman of much experience.

Rachel, in sharp contrast to her sisters, changes very little from the beginning to the end of the book. When the book starts, Rachel is “fifteen…and cares for naught but appearances” (15) and herself. Rachel is uniformly disliked by her sisters, and instead of attempting to change herself, she believes them to be the ones at fault. At age fifty, Rachel is “forever getting complements on [her] spotless complexion” (512), and continues to place herself at the center of her own universe. Throughout the entire book, Rachel is a survivalist: using anything she can to help herself. She marries men, then leaves them for others to enrich herself, and uses her ‘feminine charms’ as a bargaining chip to get her out of Kilanga village.

One way in which Rachel does change is in regard to her attitude towards staying in Africa or returning to America. When the Prices first arrive in the Congo, Rachel is “sore at [Nathan]…[for] having to be there in the first place” (49). Rachel thinks constantly about returning to America and leaving behind forever her time in Africa. Even at the end of the book, Rachel “think[s] about the life [she] missed in the good old U.S.A.” (512), and regrets never going back. However, “when push came to shove [she] was afraid” (513) to return to the U.S. She was afraid she wouldn’t fit in back home, and so never went back. This again illustrates her obsession with appearances: she stayed in a place she hated rather than go back to a place she may not fit in.

The second major strength in Kingsolver’s writing of The Poisonwood Bible lies in her amazing ability to bring a scene to life. My personal favorite is the hunt for food by setting fire to the brush in order to trap animals.

As the ring burned smaller we suddenly caught sight of its other side, the red-orange tongues and black ash closing in. The looming shapes of animals bunched up inside…not yet understanding their entrapment. Thousands of insects beat the air to a pulpy soup of animal panic. Bird hit the wall of fire and lit like bottle rockets…The animals began to run out through the fire into the open…toward people and death (346). 

This passage, as well as the following paragraphs, describes in horrible detail the slaughter of hundreds of creatures to keep the village alive. This passage brought to my mind images of billowing fire everywhere, while animals were caught frozen, in various poses of flight and terror. It’s hard to describe, but the horror of this scene was palpable to me as I read it, though I also understood the terrible necessity of it. The truth Adah comes to realize is “the death of something living is the price or our own survival, and we pay it again and again” (347). All living things kill to live, it is necessary for survival, but when the fact is right in front of your face, it is harder to accept than when it is far away. This point illustrates part of the plight of Africans and others in our world today: when a problem is far away, you don’t necessarily have to think about it, whereas if you are confronted by a problem it is hard to ignore. The Prices learn this lesson through their experiences in Africa, and take it with them after they leave.

The above passage was the one I felt best showcased the amazing ability of Kingsolver to bring a scene to life, but there were many others as well. As I read the book, I could feel and even taste the characters’ emotions, and very clearly see in my mind’s-eye what was happening. As I said, this is a very hard feeling for me to describe, but Kingsolver’s descriptions in The Poisonwood Bible were simply amazing.

Taking a less positive look at the book, The Poisonwood Bible possesses weaknesses as well as strengths. The most glaring and frustrating weakness of The Poisonwood Bible is the utter lack of even one chapter written from the point of view of Nathan Price. Never once in the entire book is his opinion of events or his own past explained or explored.

The Poisonwood Bible is written from the points of view of Orleanna Price and her four daughters. A good portion of the book is about Nathan, their husband or father. Aside from Leah and Ruth May at the start of the book, and a few descriptions by Orleanna, Nathan is described as temperamental, abusive, condescending, and unbelievably stubborn. Never once is Nathan given a chance to defend himself by giving us a window into his mind. Each chapter gives us as the readers a look into the way the writer thinks, or perceives those around them. We are never given this chance with Nathan, who is probably the most controversial character in the book. Is he in the Congo because he wants to help people, or because he didn’t die with his company? We assume the latter from what Orleanna says, but we never actually confirm this.

There is no proof for what any of the girls or Orleanna says without a word from Nathan. The majority of the novel is based on the point of views of three teenage girls. From my personal experience, I know most children don’t always agree with their parents, and especially teenage girls. Also, these are four girls whose father picked up and moved the entire family from the U.S. to Africa. While this is all conjecture, I think it at least somewhat realistic: most girls I know would not be pleased at all with their father if he told them he was moving them to Africa to be a missionary. Ruth May, Orleanna’s favorite child, was killed in Africa. She never would have been there had it not been for Nathan. Orleanna, therefore, also cannot be expected to relay with impartiality events involving Nathan. I don’t think Orleanna or the Price girls ever lied about something involving Nathan, but I do think their own personalities, prejudices, opinions, and relationships with Nathan did color the way their chapters depicted him.

I haven’t included any textual references or quotes in this section of the paper because any evidence I could use from the book is biased by whoever wrote the chapter. There is literally no impartial evidence with which to judge Nathan Price, which is the big problem. Also, it is very easy to write Nathan off as a bad person, and I’m not saying he can’t be or isn’t. The point I want to make is when we judge Nathan Price for his actions or supposed motives, we are doing so without hearing both sides of the story.

By not including any textual references or evidence for this topic, I have endeavored to level the playing field a bit. Kingsolver failed to do so, and the result was a book greatly biased against a man who never once is allowed to speak for himself. Nathan could have redeemed himself through even one chapter, or destroyed forever any hope of redemption in the eyes of the reader. Instead, we are encouraged to believe what others say of him, and to overlook his personal thoughts and feelings.

Popular opinion in class discussions was “Nathan is a bad person,” “Nathan isn’t a good father,” “Nathan hates women,” and other such accusations. Nathan may very well be all those things, but in all fairness we can’t condemn him on opinion alone. Nathan Price is never allowed to plead innocent or guilty. Barbara Kingsolver deliberately leads the reader to assign a specific judgment to this man without any evidence to support a conflicting view. Nathan, quite simply, was never given a chance to be a ‘good man’ in the eyes of the reader.

The Poisonwood Bible may also be referred to as a Termite-Eaten Bible because just like a piece of wood, it may look strong, and be strong in some places, but take a step and you may find the wood not as solid as you though. Kingsolver did a wonderful job with much of the book, but she also deliberately or by accident failed to include, in my opinion, one of the most crucial parts of the entire book. The Poisonwood Bible is an excellent book, but it has its pesky termites.