Barbara Kingsolver scathingly critiques the destructive natures of pride, ambition and Western colonialism in “The Poisonwood Bible.” The story spans thirty years and exposes the tragic failures of Nathan Price the evangelist as well as the Western colonial attitudes represented by him. Kingsolver’s first person narrative helps to humanize the epic scope and scale of this novel. She writes alternately in the voices of Orleanna Price, her mother, the Price sisters, as well as the Price sisters themselves. Nathan Price’s hotheadedness is at the core of most conflicts in the novel, but the story is told primarily by his daughters. His wife acts as a poetic side note during key moments. The book is a collection of five stories interwoven together to create a cohesive narrative.
Kingsolver is using perspective and viewpoint to further her rhetorical goals. Readers are not forced to listen to Nathan Price’s self righteousness in explaining his own actions. Instead they get five different voices through which the Price Family mission fails. The author uses individualized voices to create a “three-dimensional picture” of an evangelist full of zeal and utterly lacking in information. Leah’s “voice” is often that of her father. She explains his actions to her in the first part of the book. The support is not a result of a desire for the native cultures to be squelched, but rather from genuinely faith and compassion. Leah’s admiration for her father gradually diminishes as he becomes a self righteous mouthpiece of Western colonialism. Her moral qualities are still present, but she begins to express them in a more political way as the plot progresses.
Other sisters react more ambivalently to the actions of their father. Rachel is a selfish individual who cares more about pleasure than ideologie. Adah is a different story. Her crippling condition has given her a unique, abstract perspective. She’s piercingly negative, but her observations are sharp and she appears to be the most intelligent sister. Adah, as seen by the other narrators from outside, is intellectually inferior because she is silent. This is ironic. The reader will be shocked to learn that Adah can do more than what other people think. The crippled girl can be seen as a metaphor of Africa’s relationship with Nathan Price. Africa, like Adah, is seen as lacking from the outside, but the Congolese perspective would show a very different picture.
Orleanna is Nathan’s mother, and she provides the closest “voice” to Africa that Kingsolver can provide. Orleanna is racked with guilt for having lost her daughter in the Congo. Her brief contributions to the story are poetic ramblings that often describe Africa as an actual person who haunts the Price’s family’s history. Ruth May’s role is different from Orleanna. In the early chapters, Ruth May is naive and adventurous like every other five-yearold. However, after her passing, she became a ghostly figure that lurked in the memory of her mother, a symbol representing guilt in the family and an accusation of misguided intentions. Orleanna’s guilt is a constant until the final chapter, when Ruth May’s death allows her to forgive her mother for her mistakes. Ruth May’s “voice”, as it appears in this chapter, takes on a dramatic change. It is not until the last page that the readers realizes she is speaking. Ruth May no longer appears as the young girl she was five years ago. Her voice is now more poetic and “ascended”. In this way, Ruth becomes a Christian metaphor of rebirth. She is an example of how things that were destroyed on Earth can be reborn again in the next life. In the spiritual afterlife her view has broadened and she can forgive not only her family but also the whole effort to “civilize”. She is a symbol of Jesus Christ, as an ascended being who can offer forgiveness.
The novel is so reliant on morality, politics, and ethics that it could be easily twisted into a biased argument. Kingsolver paints a realistic portrait of Nathan Price by letting the reader see the events through his family’s eyes. Author Kingsolver does not criticize or glorify the Price Family Mission, but rather shows how it affects five characters, and by extension the Congolese. This gives the story a more realistic feel and makes the reader consider it from different perspectives, and in Adah’s case even different beliefs. This serves as a stark reminder to the evangelical Christian of how important it is to present their message.
