The Poionwood Bible Notes

The Poisonwood Bible Notes

Characters:

Nathan Price: A Baptist minister married to Orleanna Price. He is also father of four children named Rachel, Leah, Adah, and Ruth May. He views himself as a counter after the events of WW2 when his whole battalion was killed except him. He became rules by god’s teachings so that he would never be a coward again. He is very fanatical about his religion and ruled by a simple moral code.

Orleanna Price: Wife of Nathan price who deeply cares about the safety of her children. Before she was married to Nathan she was a very carefree girl and loved nature. Her husband shapes her whole personality with his religious views. Later when Ruth May dies she gains the courage to run away with her 3 children from Nathan.

Rachel Price: Daughter of Nathan Price who cares less about religion and more about how she looks. She doesn’t really enjoy her time in the Congo and just wants to leave to go back to her home country America.

Leah Price: Twin sister of Adah, Leah is very devoted to her father and helps him a lot in their garden. She is basically a tomboy and full devoted to god. She later in conflicted with her religion due to the many problems in Africa and later on devotes her whole life to helping to improve the lives of the people in the Congo.

Adah Price: Twin sister of Leah, Adah was born with a defect called hemiplegia which crippled her whole left side. She is a very quiet girl who hardly talks. She enjoys reading everything backwards rather forward. Her whole life is changed though when she figures out that she cares about her life when she has to attempt to keep herself alive. As she matures she devotes her life to science and eventually gets over her handicap.

Ruth May Price: A young girl of the price family who befriends most of the children in their village without speaking their language. She gets malaria later in the story which drains her spirit and changes her completely and she is deathly scared of green mamba snakes.

Eeben Axelroot: Pilot who takes the family to the Congo who basically has no morals and want do any of his basic jobs unless bribed to do so. Rachel also pretends to be engage to him in order to avoid marrying the chief of the village.

Methuselah: A parrot left to the family by Brother Fowles who is thrown from his cage by Nathan after he starts to say damn in a female tone. He stays near the home in search for handouts from the girls.

Brother Fowles: Previous minister before Nathan Price arrived with his family who was let go since he began dating a native and eventually marrying her.

Anatole Ngemba: A young, intelligent man who translates for Nathans sermons to the villagers and serves as a school teacher in the village as well.

Nelson: An orphan and one of Anatole’s best students who teaches the girls his language and their native customs. He also works for the Price family in exchange for a place to sleep and goods to sell at the market.

Tata Ndu: Chief of the village in the Congo that the Price family is staying in and is cautious of the Nathan and his family. He is afraid that his villagers will be upset if they follow Nathan’s teachings and will neglect their traditional gods. He makes it known to Nathan that his family isn’t welcome.

Tata Kuvundu: Religious tribesmen of the village who doesn’t like the Price family and takes a direct route to murder them by planting poisonous mamba snakes in their beds which one of them kills Ruth May.

The Underdowns: They run the finances of the missionaries and run away when the Congo is granted independence.

Mama Tataba: Works as a servant to the missionary families but left when Nathan Price disregarded her helpful advice and attempted to baptize the village.

Plot: The story takes place in 1959 when a devoted Baptist minister named Nathan Price drags his whole family to the Congo on an undertaking to save the uninfluenced people of the Congo. Nathan’s familily consists of his wife and his four daughters. The mother, Orleanna Price submissively accepts everything that happens and basically lets her husband push around. Rachel Price the oldest of the 4 daughters is upset by their transition to the Congo since she has been taken from her regular life. The youngest daughter Ruth May talks a lot about the trip and isn’t sure what to make of it at first. The family also consists of the twins Leah and Adah. Leah who is devoted to her father’s religious fervor can’t wait to get there. Adah however since crippled at birth just observes the surroundings and reads her books.

At first they misjudge what they will need to bring and bring useless things such as cake mixes which can’t be used to the air quality. Their moral starts to decrease over time due to the realizations they make well in the Congo. Nathan attempts to grow a garden to teach the natives with the help of Leah but although the garden grows it never grows fruit due to the nonexistence of bees in the area. The next thing that upsets them is when their house keeper Mama Tataba leaves due to Nathan ignoring her advice and after he attempted to hold a baptism in the river. No one would go in the river due to the abundance of crocodiles that had just recently eaten a young girl.

Although his family is upset by these events and gradually changing due to the culture around them, Nathan focuses on his goals. Nathans still wants to baptize the villagers and refuses to let anyone change his mind so when Anatole attempts to tell him the Chief thinks Christianity will be bad for their village he throws him out instead of learning from him in order to find a different approach to get through to the villagers. The situation for the Price family worsens as the Underdowns inform them that the Congo is about to become independent and they should flee since they assume all westerners are going to be purged.  Nathan resists which end with his family staying in the village instead of evacuation with the rest of them when the plane arrives. Orleanna stays in bed well her three oldest daughters find a way to care for their family without the aid of supplies from the Underdowns. She completely changes several weeks later and has the ability to speak her mind to her husband and then begins to search for way to escape Africa with her daughters. She even tries to hire a pilot named Eeben Axelroot but he refused unless they pay him money up front for the trip.

Later Leah begins to fall in love with the local school teacher Anatole and she also starts to resent her father for his simple views of what is right and what is wrong. Their situation worsens as the chief leader proposes to Rachel which forces her to pretend to be engaged to the pilot Eeben Axelroot. Ruth May eventually gets malaria causing her be a shadow of her former self after she recovers. A dry spell hits Kilanga which causes the people to starve. The village sets up a large hunt and there is controversy in the village about whether or not Leah is allowed to hunt since she is an excellent shot. They have a vote and it goes in her favor which outrages the leaders of the village since they don’t believe women should hunt. The religious leader Tata Kuvundu takes a direct route in order to punish the prices by planting poisonous mamba snakes in their home. They try to scare the snake away from the house but on its way out it bites Ruth May on her shoulder causing her to die then and there.

Due to the death of Ruth May, their mother leads the remaining 3 daughters out of the village. Leah eventually gets malaria on their journey and is forced to stay so she marries Anatole and stays in the Congo. Leah spends her life with Anatole in order to work to gain true independence for African nations. Rachael flies to Johannesburg, South Africa by Eeben Axelroot. She gets married 3 times and lives out the rest of her life in a luxury hotel in the French Congo that was given to her by her last husband. Adah gets over her handicap in order to become an epidemiologist and takes science as her primary religion. Their mother however lives the rest of her life feeling guilty for Ruth May’s death and only wants her forgiveness.

Themes:

Guilt: In the Poisonwood Bible it really shows guilt as a theme as show by the daughters and their mother after the death of Ruth May. I feel like it relates to the way the United States feels about the role we played in Africa’s affairs. I think the book is trying to show us the many possible ways to deal with this guilt as shown through the daughters. Racheal attempted to forget it ever happened, well Leah attempted to be politically active through her life, and Adah worked through science to make sense of it all and help others.

Arrogance: The book also shows arrogance as one of its theme as shown through Nathan Price who thinks he can just change a whole society just because he believes that his teachings are better and he attempts to force his way of life onto them. It can basically be seen throughout all of the Price family and even the Underdowns since they all believed when they first arrived that they were going to bring these natives a superior way of living.

Symbols:

The Poisonwood Tree: Nathans encounter with the Poisonwood tree caused him server pain since he was warned not to touch the plant and did it anyways due to his stubbornness. He is stubborn due to his belief in his religion which causes him to be thickheaded. He was so culturally arrogant that the way he was using Jesus he was basically a poison that could cause immense pain and even death in some cases.