Rachel's Complexity, and Narrational Genius

I really like The Poisonwood Bible so far. I like the plot, I like the different narrations, and I like the complexity of all the characters. I think that Rachel is my favorite narrator at this point. She is so honest -- like we said in class one day, if Rachel notices something and says it, it must be true. I also think that she's a lot more intelligent that she's given credit for. While she doesn't know how to cook and she save her mirror in a crisis over anything else, she is still very observant and I think that she feels things very deeply. She seems to understand politics, even if she presents herself as being ignorant. And she understands the relationships within her family better than anyone else does. She looks at everything from the same disdainful perspective, which means that she sees everything equally. Her bias is spread evenly over her whole family, while the other characters have a lot of different emotions about each family member. My favorite moment so far in the book is when Rachel takes a bath after the hunt. Her thoughts, again, are superficial, but her actions are genuine. The image of her trying to scrub the hardship off of her was the most authentic moment that I've seen of her so far. I'm excited to see how she changes in the fifth book.

I think that the importance of the narration is impossible to miss. Firstly, I think that it is very important to tell the story from the perspective of only women. Conrad had two women, only one who spoke, in Heart of Darkness, and, no matter Achebe's own beliefs and intentions, Things Fall Apart was noticeably lacking in feminist themes. By having women narrate the book, we get a perspective of the men in the story that would otherwise be absent. We see the ways in which men are complex, rather than only seeing their strength and ever-present action. Also, we get more of a story about the strength of the women in the village, who are missing body parts and are raising and losing children, and who are holding the village up on their backs while the men maintain the illusion that they are more important. By giving five different perspectives, from different ages, we see a lot of little details and are shown a lot of relationships that help to tell the story and characterize the nature of the Congo and the missionaries. Ruth May gives details about the story that no other character would notice; Adah characterizes her sisters and parents; Leah talks about the politics of the Congo with Anatole; and Rachel shows the expectations pushed on women of her age, both in the Congo and in the US. Orleanna gives the big picture in specifically placed intervals throughout the book, foreshadowing and filling in gaps and drawing our attention to relationships or politics that need more elaboration and attention. I think that the narrative structure of this book is crucial to its message and quality; Kingsolver is quite brilliant in her storytelling, and she makes the novel impossibly complex while being completely whole.