Perspective Changes Everything

By design, The Poisonwood Bible contrasts both Things Fall Apart and Heart of Darkness in various ways.  The most obvious of which are the narrators, as discussed in the last blog post.  Another difference is the portrayal of Africa, both as a political continent and a physical landscape.  Heart of Darkness follows a white man's journey driven by a white man's quest.  The view of Africa is very much from an outsider, with little description of the environment other than mysterious and unknown.  Things Fall Apart does follow a native of Africa, but focuses on the people in the story rather than their surroundings.  While forest is the setting of unholy people and deeds, such as twins, killing your adopted son, and practicing Christianity, the scene itself is not described.  Rather, it is used as a catalyst for all that is bad and immoral in the world.  For The Poisonwood Bible, the jungle represents far more than a insentient force or a backdrop for human activity.  It is a living, breathing ecosystem with beautiful creatures and forms a complex web of plants and animals.  Each being is described in detail, with significant aid from Kingsolver's background in biology.

In HoD, the people of Africa appear solely as scenery, no more humanized than animals.  In TFA and TPB, these same people are described as real people, with human thoughts and faults.  However, TFA and HoD decline to mention the true animals of Africa, the mongooses, mosquitoes, and snakes of the natural world.  In TPB, animals are separate from both whites and natives, seen as observers and players in the events of humans.  Through portraying animals as having minds of their own, Kingsolver makes sure that they do not get lumped into the same category as the natives, and vice versa, as both HoD and TFA do.  Instead, they are an entirely separate entity with thoughts and feelings of their own, able to decipher the complex signals of humans and how to respond to such.