Adah In Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible

Introduction The Poisonwood Bible, written by Barbara Kingsolver and published in 1998, is a novel set in Kilanga, a small village in the Congo of Africa. The Prices are a family of six who venture from their home in Bethlehem, Georgia into the foreign world of the Congo on a missionary trip. The novel is told by five of the family members’ perspectives. As the Congo grows on the family, each one of the daughters and their mother learn more about themselves and each other than they could have learned back in Georgia. The Congo gave them a new perspective of their own lives and the lives of others. The Congo also gave them all a sense of independence, which inevitably led them to have enough courage to leave their father/husband, Nathan. In
In the selected passage, Kingsolver’s nostalgic atmosphere is created through the use of her character’s thought-provoking diction and rhetorical questioning, personified imagery, and the creation of short, choppy sentences to provide the reader with an insight to Adah Price’s inner most feelings and thoughts. Adah is one of the most thought-provoking characters in The Poisonwood Bible. Kingsolver’s choice of diction when using Adah as the narrator is different from the other characters because she speaks more eloquently than her sisters. In the first lines of the passage, Adah is alluding Shakespeare’s Tempest to signify the changes her father created in their family. By referencing Shakespeare, Kingsolver creates a character with higher-level thinking processes, which adds to the eloquence of her character. Adah also questions the mind, using rhetorical questions to provoke inner thought. Her explanations are of higher level thought, rather than simply being stated. An example of this is when Adah questions the worth of a life. She compares real life to fantasy. Through this diction, it is perceived that Adah Price is not the girl who hides in the shadows because of her physical state; she is the girl who absorbs knowledge to her full extent. Through her questioning, she is seen as an intellectual who can reach beyond simplicity, and beyond the thinking capacity of her
Ruth May is the embodiment of a child-like imagination, where there are no limits or boundaries. The way Ruth May can connect with her environment is very similar to the way the speaker in the poem “Where the Sidewalk Ends” by Shel Silverstein, talks about the world where the sidewalk ends. In “Where the Sidewalk Ends,” Silverstein creates two worlds: one where the child-like soul thrives and one where the child-like soul is not acceptable. His poem is about how all of us have that whimsical soul, but it is bogged down by the “place where the smoke blows black” (line 7). In The Poisonwood Bible, Ruth May is the only one of her family members who has a child-like innocence and wonder, which makes sense because she is only a child. Her character was to give a different perspective of Africa. A perspective that showed the curiosity and wonder in