Disclaimer: I do not want to completely ruin the book, so I did not complete a very detailed summary for this reason. To understand my review and to make informed comments (which is actually not necessary), I urge you to read the book!
The Review
The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver 1998) is a story of four women, the daughters and wife, Orleanna, of a Southern evangelical Baptist minister, Nathan Price who takes his family on a mission trip to the Belgian Congo in 1959. Nearly a year and a half later, three of the four women flee the Congo and the tragedy that dissolved the family. Written in the voice of each woman, the story is a historical and personal glimpse into issues regarding race, politics, and faith.
Rachael, the oldest child, was fifteen-years-old when the Price family left Bethlehem, Georgia. Leah and Adah are thirteen-years-old twins and Ruth May was five-years-old. Ill-prepared for the harsh life of a third-world village, the Price family manages to survive the first year, wealthier than the average family, only because of a fifty dollar a month stipend from the Mission League.
Racial issues were prominent within the book, only because of the majority of Caucasian people were significantly wealthier than the native Africans. On the women’s flight from the Congo, Leah contracts malaria and is unable to complete the journey back to the United States. Anatole Ngemba, the school teacher from their old village in the Congo helps her gain back her health in the city, and they later get married and have four children. Leah is the one woman out of the Price family who challenges the racial issues each day since she married Anatole and still lives in Africa. The native Africans are suspicious of her, even though her household is in action similar to every other household in her neighborhood. With the knowledge gleaned only from looking back on history, it is easy to lay blame. Yet it is not the fault of the African people, nor is it the fault of the Caucasian people.
Politics play a large role in the reason strife remains in the life of almost all Africans. In the African village there is one man who is chief and the men who are close to the chief gather to make important decisions to make. The options are discussed until there is one hundred percent agreement; this is how the African people make choices. The larger choices, the ones that affect many villages, are communicated through drums from village to village. When people have to move from their village to the cities, in which the living conditions are degrading and polluted, it is obvious that Caucasian people have a wealthier status in life. Africans are treated as a dirty race of human being and untrustworthy because they steal (the reason being that nearly all Africans are malnourished and dirt poor). An African President can only stay President if he aligns his ideas with other nations, allowing them to rape Africa for the natural resources while beating Afrians to the ground with the extraction of diamonds and oil. Rachael, the eldest child, desperate to leave the Congo finds an offer in Eeben Axelroot, a shifty pilot who used to bring the Price family’s rations until the money stopped. Eeben is part of an elite group of people, the ones who benefit from Africa’s misery. Eeben takes Rachael to South Africa; he is just one of many men who will rescue her from one situation or another.
Faith is another important subject in the book, which is indicated primarily through Nathan Price, the Baptist minister. His purpose in bringing his young family into the Congo was to bring the ideas of Jesus to the “savage natives.” Nathan is passionate and determined in bringing the ideas of his harsh, unforgiving god to the people, which stems from the guilt he still carries from his short stint as a soldier in World War II. He turns a blind eye to the increasing difficulties in finding food, only paying hostile attention when there is a lack thereof. The Africans idea of god or faith is in tune with nature and people. They feel that to be kind to the earth and each other (even disliked society members) is a sort of worship to the gods and will bring goodwill to each person. Death and famine are signs of unpleased gods. Nathan was pleased when he noticed more people coming to his Sunday sermons, yet was again blind to the fact that his mission was a second chance to the outcasts in society who took this as a second option–they had been unable to please the African gods, so perhaps they can please this Jesus.
The innocent mission trip permanently marked all four women with the Congo, and so did to Nathan Price. Faith, race and politics are all issues that still are relevant today, which is why I found The Poisonwood Bible intriguing to read. It is incredibly simple to see the problems another human has in their own life, to judge one way as “right” and the other way as “wrong.” What may be right on one side of the line may be completely different on the other side.
