The West Meets Africa

The image presented of Africa in The Poisonwood Bible is very different from that in Heart of Darkness and Things Fall Apart. A large part of this is the way that Kingsolver's experiences differ from Conrad's and Achebe's, as well as the time at which The Poisonwood Bible was written. Kingsolver, because of time and culture, has a lot to lose by portraying Africa poorly, which informs the way in which she writes and describes. Kingsolver portrays Africa complexly, although still from a white perspective, and she uses the animals in the jungle to create metaphors of relationships and circumstances.

As compared to Heart of Darkness, The Poisonwood Bible is vastly inclusive and observant about social, political, and racial issues in colonial Africa. Conrad writes from a white perspective, but includes no thought, speech, or culture of the African people that Marlow encounters. He never talks about cultural traditions, he makes no distinctions between African tribes and villages, and he does not include any African languages (or even names of black characters). Conrad's portrayal of Africa is overwhelmingly negative, where the jungle is a corrupter of good men and the refusal to accept western culture is a mark of depravity. In contrast, though Kingsolver and her narrators are white, she makes a point to include culture, language, and diversity in her depiction of Africa. All of her black characters have names and personalities, an enormous part of the novel is the role of politics in cities and villages within central Africa, and Adah especially makes note of the profundity of Kikongo language. The observation of Africa is neither passive nor objective; each character has a specific way of reacting with the culture and environment, which presents diversity and shows many different perspectives on a very complicated continent.

It is very interesting to compare Things Fall Apart to The Poisonwood Bible. Okwonko is black and belongs to a village in Africa. There is no awareness of politics outside of the village and the nation of villages that it belongs to, except for the intrusion of white missionaries on the established lifestyle of the people of the villages. Kingsolver shows many different sides of Africa and imperialism, focusing slightly less on the effect of imperialism on individuals and focusing more on the effect on the Congo as a whole, or the Congolese people as a whole. This perspective is still really important, especially since Kingsolver is a white woman making retrospective observations of the Congo and the political turmoil of the mid- to late twentieth century. Both books show African cultures, religion, and language, showing how these things differ between villages and how they contrast and collide with Christianity, capitalism, and western agricultural systems.

The inclusion of animals in The Poisonwood Bible shows the relationships that exist between Africa and western nations. In Africa, there is a harmony between the environment and the animals. Adah says as much in her final chapter of the book, where she discusses the balance between parasite and host, between animal and nature. Even destructive animals like the driver ants are Africa's way of "cleansing itself" (529). They exist as part of a harmony that is essential to the survival of all life forms. The African people are a natural part of this life, in the way that they farm, hunt, travel, and die. Each interaction between a white character and an animal shows that the Europeans and Americans are not part of this harmony, that they are trying to force their way in but get upset when they are not on top of nature as they are in Europe and America. The pain and outrage of the Price family at the driver ants, the crocodiles that keep children from being baptized, and the snake that kills Ruth May show that they are not accustomed to their lot in this natural balance. The west attempts to take advantage of the land without expecting to receive any pain in return, and I think that Kingsolver's way of telling us this shows the differences between western and African cultures. The characters that fit best in to African cultures -- Ruth May and Adah -- were the characters who accepted their subservience to a natural order.

I think that Kingsolver tries to use the subjective views of her characters on Africa to show a greater, more subjective view of the relationships between the west and Africa. Conrad's entire novella was a single very subjective view of the continent, and Achebe's novel was a slightly less subjective view of the effect of missionaries and imperialism on individuals and villages. Kingsolver shows the greater picture, I think because she knows that, as a white woman, the story of African individuals is not necessarily hers to tell.