Each Sister's Growth

Though raised similarly, each daughter holds a unique perspective on the world. Rachel is materialistic and feels pressured to display herself properly at all times. Leah wants to know everything, but as she learns more she begins to doubt listening to everything others tell her. Adah has distinct pessimism that changes as she develops out of her handicap. Ruth May holds innocence as well as childlike stubbornness. Because of the setting and occurrences in the novel, each character represents different aspects of Western perspectives, and this influences how they react to events within Africa.

Rachel represents the core idea of colonization in the need for Africa to be “improved” into something more western. She arrived in Africa treasuring her mirror and shutting out African culture such as the dress, language, and activities. This is similar to those in Leopoldville where they keep Western decadence while their African neighbors struggle for food. However, unlike the attitude of some similar to her, Rachel does not feel a necessity to help others despite her privilege. After the death of Ruth May, Rachel’s beliefs are mirrored in her running the hotel. She continues her reverence of western culture and does not allow Africans into her hotel out of her idea of superiority.

Similar in a way to Rachel, Leah represents the idea that westerners should interfere in Africa, but for her she believes it should be in aid, not self-indulgent. As a child, Leah mimics the beliefs of her father and truly believes they are meant to correct and save the villagers. As she grows and begins to understand African culture, she learns how to coexist within it and enjoy it. Her time in Africa allows her to separate her beliefs from her father’s, eventually letting her to become compassionate toward the villagers instead of viewing them as people needing saving.

Adah holds a negative view of Western culture, contrasted to a slightly less cynical view of Africa. She is able to appreciate African culture as she tends to place herself more as an observer. The events in Africa allow Adah to begin viewing her own life in perspective. She realises her own death will occur with the lion attack, and her mother's view of her during the ant’s flooding. When she grows older and moves to America, she still holds a grudge against her mother about the ants. Also, in Africa she was not placed as an outsider for her limp and was able to accept it as a part of her. Her formed connection with it is tested later when she learns she could lose her handicap.

Ruth May represents the blending of western and African culture. Being a child, she doesn’t yet understand societal concepts like racism in a way that she can apply it to her own judgements. Because of this, she has the easiest time in befriending the other children, and her mind is malleable enough to let her learn new languages and adopt African culture into her own. However as her death is the major turning point in the novel, it can not be determined how Africa fully shaped her in the way it can be viewed in her sisters.

Each sister represents an aspect of the Western perspective, from inviting to expulsion. Because of the way the enter Africa and there predetermined mindsets on their experiences, each girl is differently affected by the events in Africa. The way in which they settled their own lives are all directly influenced by their childhood in Africa, whether it be influence on location or occupation.

The Representatives

The Poisonwood Bible has four sisters that are unique and give their individual opinions about Africa.  Each compare their home with Africa and observe their surroundings. Rachel, Leah, Adah, and Ruth May all offer different perspectives that represent Western and Biblical literature.

They all represent different things. Rachel represents the Western view of Africa that believes it's dirty and lesser than she is. Leah is the the view that thinks Africans are savages who need to be saved by her Christian religion. She believes this until she marries one and sees them for the humans they are. Adah offers a cynical view of Western culture and is more of an African ally. Ruth May is the innocent one who represents the religious aspect of right and wrong.

Africa affects each character and they carry the experiences with them when they leave. Rachel is affected by Africa because she believes she cannot go home and she likes the power that being a white woman running a hotel gives her. Leah is so affected that she denounces her religion and no longer believes in her dad as a hero. She carries the experiences with her by using them to help her survive her life in Africa and marry and have kids with Anatole. Adah is affected by Africa by realizing that her handicap does not have to be focused on. This prompts her to fix her handicap when she returns to America. Africa affects Ruth May by literally killing her, but it helps the rest of her family understand the Africans lives.

Carrying Their Experiences

      Each sister carries different values and experiences into and out of Africa. Their different personalities and different beliefs make each of their narratives unique and interesting to read. Each character also evolves in a different way and also deals with hardships differently. Their time in the Congo has clearly effected each sister in a very different way.

      Ruth May has less time as a narrator for a couple different reasons. First of all, since her voice is the youngest, and therefore, the least sophisticated, Kingsolver seems to use her narrative sparingly. Also, since Ruth May dies halfway through the book, she has significantly less time to narrate than her sisters. However, when she does narrate, Ruth May's innocence and naivety are clearly shown through the way she views things. She has a very simple view of the way things are. She believes that if someone does something bad, God will punish them. Basically, she believes whatever people tell her. She doesn't really evolve as a character because she dies so young, but the way people view her changes. Her sisters didn't really take much notice of her before her death, but afterwards, they were deeply affected.

      Adah is very skeptical of religion from the beginning. She doesn't believe in God and doesn't have much faith in her family either. Because she views herself as an outsider, she doesn't really seem to connect to her siblings or her parents. Africa has clearly had an effect on her and the way she views the world as well as her family. When leaving Africa, she is literally separated from everyone in her family except her mother. Adah and Orleanna become much closer after leaving together, but, at least to Adah, it doesn't seem like Orleanna fully understands her. Adah's becoming a doctor and studying parasitology seem to be things she decided on while in the Congo. 

        Leah undergoes the most dramatic transformation of the sisters. She begins the novel as a loyal daughter who continually vies for her father's approval despite his constant dismissal of her. She studies the Bible and would do anything for her father. However, as they spend time in the Congo, Leah comes to realize that bad things can happen to good, faithful people. Leah also realizes that her father is incredibly selfish and does not make good decisions for his family. By marrying Anatole and making the decision to live in Africa, Leah fully adopts the African lifestyle and abandons her American roots. She is very deeply affected by Ruth May's death because she feels very responsible for it. She carries that guilt with her for the rest of the novel. 

      Rachel does undergo a transformation, but it almost seems to be for the worse. She doesn't really care much for religion or Africa, and wants to go home. Her vanity and lack of interest as well as her attitude make her a stereotypical teenager, but she also proves herself to be smart and resourceful. As much as Rachel tries to make it seem like Africa hasn't had an affect on her, it is clear that it has. She claims to hate Africa, but never ends up bringing herself to leave. She moves from the Congo to South Africa, where she is surrounded by many white people and ends up becoming pretty racist, but she does not return to America. This is because she wouldn't be able to fit back into her old life there. She would no longer be in control. 

      Each sister's personality and view of religion is unique. They carry their experiences and deal with them in different ways. 

Broad and Deep

The Poisonwood Bible is unique in that the variety of narrators lends the audience multiple perspectives of the events in the novel.  Although they are all part of a family, the women relating their lives to the paper are all very different.    The daughters especially provide a range of lenses; they may even represent different perspectives of literature.  Kingsolver is a genius when it comes to narration, providing a broad scope of the time period within a single piece.  As far as the four daughters, they all have their own charisma and set of ideals.  Rachel represents a secular point of view, more concerned with worldly pleasures and goals than keeping the big picture in mind at all times.  For Leah, the world is far more spiritual and religious.  Though she is not necessarily a strict Christian throughout the book, being deterred by the actions of her father, she remains hopeful that there is a form of spirit in the universe.  Adah portrays a more scientific and logical point of view.  What is seen is what is to be believed, and anything not deeply founded in the apparent is to be deeply questioned.  Ruth May, for the short time we get to read her side of the story, is slightly more innocent and ignorant, explaining events as a child would.  She sees the world as fascinating and a place to let imagination run free, not caring so much about how things truly came to be.  These perspectives encapsulate much of the different types of literature, providing a strong basis for Kingsolver to present multiple interpretations of what truly happened to the Prices.

For the Price family, each member lost and gained a lot during their time together in Africa.  For Nathaniel, he slowly lost all credibility and sanity over his time in Africa.  When the family arrived in Kilanga, he could pass for a normal person and fooled everyone into thinking he could make sound decisions.  However, as time progressed, his true mentality started shining through, exposing the coward who could not forget the reason why he survived Vietnam- straying from the group because he could not bear the strain of the task.  He carries this reexposure of character with disgrace, allowing himself to self-destruct.  Orleanna takes a very different message from Africa- inexplicable events happen without our control, but we can remove ourselves from any situation.  After Ruth May dies, Orleanna has a one-track mind, keeping busy doing exactly the opposite of what she would have as Nathaniel’s wife.  Rachel sees Africa as a means to an end, living her life as head-strongly as possible.  Her time in Kilanga taught her nothing about how to treat those unlike you, her trajectory through life remaining relatively unchanged.  Leah transforms from someone who blindly and wholly followed what she was told into someone who makes up her own mind about the world and is strong in her opinions and ideals.  With her new family, she grows so much in the Congo that going back to America seems like devolving into a sterile, unwelcoming realm.  Adah uses her experiences in Africa to fuel her drive for justice, and sees her time in diaspora as the captivity of her body.  Once she gains control of all her motor functions, she looks back to Africa as another type of bondage.  And Ruth May, leaving Africa in a different way, gains the ability to see her family and the world from up above, just like when she would climb the tallest tree to see the world around her.  All members of the Price family change in some way during and because of their time together in Africa.

Africa the Sculptor

Each sister is incredibly different, and represents a different aspect of Western literature regarding Africa. Because each sister is so different, she is molded by Africa in different ways. Rachel is the egocentric aspect of Western literature regarding Africa. Rachel is Africa as background, Africa as blank space. Rachel is Heart of Darkness, Africa as medium for Western experience. She is Africa the unnamed, Kilanga the unnamed, her nephews unrelated. While Rachel would have liked to been untouched by Africa, she is shaped by it anyway. She has repressed most of her childhood, has clung to racism, and has a need for control. Africa also led her to give up meat.

Leah is connected to central Africa, to the culture of that region. She represents Western literature as repentance, as protest, as making amends. Leah cannot leave Africa, as there's no way for her live in America any longer. She does not like the culture there, and holds bitterness and contempt towards that country for its actions regarding Africa. Out of all the characters, Africa shapes Leah the most. Africa becomes a part of Leah's identity, and Africa makes Leah want to make things Right.

Adah is Africa the objective. She is the Western field guide, the history book. Adah is Africa the collection of biomes, Africa the overpopulated. She is Africa the survival of the fittest. Adah came to Africa and spent most of her time there in her books and in her brain. Nevertheless, she is shaped as well. Africa revealed to Adah the Way of things, making her question her Hippocratic oath, and question life and death.

Ruth May is the journal, open to Africa. She is the blank space that will be filled by Africa, and subsequently left in Africa. Ruth May carries nothing when she leaves, but a tree branch carries her. Africa gives her friendship, gives her excitement, and African Communist Boy Scouts. It also gives her death, or takes from her life.

Different Paths

Although the four Price sisters were members of the same family and endured similar experiences, they all differ in so many ways.  There is no questioning the fact that their time in Africa had a profound impact on each of them.  However, the manner in which which each girl shows the impact is unique.

Rachel is Rachel.  From the beginning of the book she was an egocentric American girl who could not fathom the idea of having to look up from her own little bubble.  One would assume (and hope) that as she grew older she would become more mature and perhaps show a bit more depth.  However, it seems as though for Rachel her experience in Africa and the arguable trauma she endured ruined any chance of her growing out of her ecocentric tendencies.  It seems as though by marrying multiple men who were horrible and opening a hotel, Rachel was covering up her pain.  From a psychological perspective, she was represses the experiences that she felt were too traumatic to think about.  She is trying to forget the death of Ruth May, the rage of her father, the disease, the animals burning, and so on.  Rachel is angry about how Africa ruined her in many ways.  As a result she feels the need to hate it.  She cannot even love her nephews who have an African father.

The perspective of Western literature that Rachel represents is the civilized vs savages.  In many ways she aligns with the feelings of Heart of Darkness.  She does not want to learn about the culture. She does not want to learn people's names or what they enjoy doing.  Like the characters in Heart of Darkness and other post-colonialist works which demonize the African continent and its people, Rachel does not want to think about the place that "ruined" her as having any merit.

Leah is in many ways the opposite of Rachel.  Instead of hiding from the fact that Africa was now a part of her, she embraced it and continued to live much like she did as a young girl in Africa.  By marrying Anatole, Leah refused to in any way demonize Africa and its people.  Instead she made herself a part of Africa.  Unlike Rachel, Leah does not look down upon dark skin.  Instead she wishes that her white skin would not stand out so much.  Africa is a part of Leah.  When she goes home to America she feels out of place.  She does not like how it smells like nothing.  She is disgusted by the way people look at Anatole and their sons.  Instead of running away from the Africa that consumed her childhood, Leah made a home out of it.  She became educated and wanted to work to heal the torn up country that tore apart her family.

The perspective of Western literature that Leah represents is the one that is disgusted by mistreatment of Africa.  It is the perspective that wants to show Africa as the whole, complex continent that it truly is.  It is the honest perspective that tries to tell things as they are while sympathizing with the people who are involved in the stories.

Adah is more like Leah than Rachel but is truly unique.  After leaving Africa, Adah really struggles with understanding why she lived and Ruth May did not.  After seeing so much sickness and death and pain, Adah wanted to understand more.  This is probably why she decided to go into the medial profession.  She took the uncertainty and trauma of her African experience and turned it into something useful.  Out of all the sisters Adah probably has the most questions about why everything that happened in Africa happened as it did.

The perspective of Western literature that Adah represents is the questioning perspective.  It is the one that asks why things happen as they do.  It is the one that asks why good people die and bad people live.  It is the one that asks what the point of life is.

Ruth May was the unlucky one.  She died while her sisters lived.  Obviously as far as the impact that Africa had on her, it was major.  She lost her life.  However, while she was alive Ruth May embraced life.  Ruth May was too young and undeveloped to really fully represent a piece of Western literature. However, if she did it would involve innocence.

A Universal Experience

In The Poisonwood Bible, all four sisters have the same experience of being torn from their homes in America and forced to spend almost two years in Africa. This experience proves harrowing and traumatic at times, eye-opening and wondrous at others, but each sister feels one of these emotions at some point in the story. However, before, during, and especially after the experience ends, each sister lives and tells her story from a different perspective. Even though Leah and Rachel both stay in Africa, they represent very different perspectives of the continent, and even though Ruth May never got to return to America, she never got to establish her own life in Africa the way Leah and Rachel did, and so she joins Adah in telling her story from an American perspective. Besides the perspective in which they tell the story, all four sisters are also affected in many different ways, causing them to react in even more different ways.

Rachel represents the Western influence on Africa. The ivory mines of Heart of Darkness and chapel in the forest of Things Fall Apart are resurrected in the form of Rachel’s hotel, and even before she takes on this business venture, she thinks of everything in the context of Western culture (for example, when she cannot name a single person, besides the other white missionaries, in Kilanga). By contrast, Leah represents a more local perspective of Africa. Despite her race, she is experiencing firsthand the social, economic, and political injustices facing the citizens of the Congo, and when she returns to America, she is horrified at the excess and gluttony she finds.

Across the ocean, Adah represents the knowledgeable view of Africa from America. She is safe on American soil, but she knows what is happening in other parts of the world, and she has always felt pity for those who were unlucky enough to be born elsewhere. Finally, Ruth May represents the less knowledgeable view of Africa from America. As a child, her worldview is shaped mostly by that of her family and her religion, and thus, she has a very sheltered and innocent view of what is happening, which can have positive and negative consequences (playing Mother May I despite language and cultural barriers vs. “the Tribes of Ham”).

No matter which continent their perspectives lie in, all four sisters have been affected strongly by Africa. Most notably, it kills Ruth May, but it also opens her eyes to her mother’s suffering, as well as some of the things that happen outside of her father’s gaze. In the cases of the other sisters, it affects them in much more subtle ways than death, but it does still have an impact. Rachel has become a superficial shell of the strong-minded and observant person she once was, pushing down all her thoughts, feelings, and memories of Africa in order to feel like a calm, controlled, successful adult. By contrast, Adah and Leah are unable to push down the atrocities they have seen. Of course, they react to it in different ways: Leah stays in the thick of it and tries to help those around her, as well as herself, survive, while Adah goes home and attempts to save the people of Africa from there.

When those months of mission work in Kilanga are over, they have only ended in the physical sense. Life in Africa stays with all four sisters, even the ones who, for one reason or another, did not spend the rest of their lives there. The trauma they have lived through is universal, even though it manifests in different perspectives and reactions. The time they spent together left the same scars, but they hurt each sister in different ways, and this is evident in the way each side of the story is told.