The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel
by Barbara Kingsolver
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Book Summary Information
Author: Barbara KingsolverEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-05-31
ISBN: 0060786507
Number of pages: 576
Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Book Reviews of The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel
Book Review: Rethinking Development
Summary: 4 Stars
In response to some outrageously inappropriate methods of international development, The Poisonwood Bible, a solemn work of historical fiction, makes its American audience rethink development. In the last half-century, America has acquired the means to help very many people throughout the world. Unfortunately, she has also acquired the attitude that she has all the right ideas and answers to development problems. In order to overturn American arrogance and to remove deeply held cultural prejudices, Barbara Kingsolver effectively appeals to her American readers' pathos and logos, which help them to question their misguided sense of ethos.
Nathan Price is one big infuriating appeal to pathos. A hardheaded Baptist preacher, he decrees that the Price family will go civilize and Christianize the African heathens. He extracts obedience from his wife and daughters, but he does not provide for them or protect them. Instead, he abuses them verbally, physically, and spiritually. He condemns the Africans for behavior that is frowned upon by his brand of Christianity. This is an example of an appeal to pathos because Kingsolver's American audience fears to be like Nathan. He had good intentions and he was firm in what he believed. Readers might initially expect him to succeed, because he possesses traditional American values. But the readers see for themselves the ruin he brings on himself and his family when he assumes he had all the answers. These negative effects of the Law of Unintended Consequences effectively reveals the possibility to Americans that they are causing more harm than good. Some Americans believe the institution of religion, especially Christianity, is universally applicable and useful, and many hold it as authority. Yet Kingsolver portrays the South's edition of Christianity here as a worthless appendage, perhaps even harmful. She does this to break down the barrier of stubbornness that is assembled by a sense of ethos, or deference to authority, when that authority dictates "ideal culture."
Kingsolver makes another appeal to pathos when she shows the human consequences of America's international policy in the 1960s and 70s. The altruism of the United States is called into question as well as the altruism of the institution of religion. Kingsolver leads the reader to rejoice with the Africans when they gain independence from Belgium and then to mourn with the Africans over the assassination of the democratically elected leader, Patrice Lumumba. This is an appeal to pathos because the reader has formed relationships with the characters in The Poisonwood Bible, so the readers experience what the characters experience. The appeal is strengthened when they learn that America helped orchestrate the assassination. They can't understand why America would oppose democracy and cause so much suffering to those characters they consider friends. In this way the author's appeal to pathos overcomes the audience's sense of ethos. They begin to question the preconceptions characteristic of American developers.
I will point out one final appeal to pathos. This appeal turns into an attack on U.S. business, coming right after the attack on U.S. politics. The African perspective of raw material export is shown. "Poor Congo, barefoot bride of men who took her jewels and promised the Kingdom" (201). Stories are told of the riches of the Congo. It is replete with natural resources such as copper and diamonds, but the Africans don't benefit from them. Instead, fleets of American jets make off with them. Africa still starves. Those characters with whom relationships have been formed suffer because they have no access to their own resources. The very nature of it feels unjust to American readers who, upon learning the true source of African poverty, question the legitimacy of U.S. business.
The author appeals to logos by showing characters doing something illogical. The following example illustrates how swallowing American pride would have led to better solutions: Nathan Price is determined he will plant a garden, just like in good ol' Georgia, to show the African half-brains how to farm. He is fixin' to single-handedly solve world hunger. However, his manner of gardening is adapted to Georgian soil and weather patterns. It turns out that Africa is different from Georgia. (Go figure.) World hunger remains unsolved, to say the least. It is logically clear to the readers that Africans have developed methods that work for their land and climate. Readers wonder, with exasperation, why Nathan refuses to also be logical. They learn to respect others' solutions, just like Nathan did not.
Another example of an appeal to logos comes in Nathan's obsession with baptism, which shows how obstinacy can be dangerous. At first he tries persuasion to get the villagers to agree to baptism. Then he tries any way he can to con the villagers into the river for the dunking, but they will have none of it. Deep into the book, we learn why Nathan never succeeds. There are crocodiles in the river! Of course the Africans are not going to get in the water! Once again, Nathan assumes that he knows best.
When readers see just how illogical a character can be, that character loses credibility. This happens even if that character is the U.S. government. A favored method of the United States is to grant large sums of money to the government. It seems that the United States assumes that all countries run under checks and balances and the sunshine laws and whatnot. They're not all run like that, by the way. In the Congo's case, that money is spent by the corrupt dictator (that the United States placed in power!) for personal extravagance and waste. His cronies also got some of the spoils, but starving orphans and malaria victims never saw any of it. Clearly, money in the hands of a corrupt dictator is not going to his people, no matter how hungry they are. This is undeniable logic for the audience, but the U.S. government fails to come to the same conclusion. This loss of credibility causes readers to question the government's actions, which teaches them to observe the situation before stepping in blindly.
The readers learn, along with Nathan's daughter Leah, that "you can't learn anything when pretending to be the smartest person in the room" (229). Kingsolver masterfully teaches this lesson by appealing to reason and creating emotional responses that weaken respect for the developmental approaches of religion, politics, and business. These institutions have dictated America's outlook on international development for sixty years. But with respect for the "dictator" gone, at last readers find the need to look for better answers and methods.
Summary of The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel
The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it -- from garden seeds to Scripture -- is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa.
This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.Oprah Book ClubŪ Selection, June 2000: As any reader of The Mosquito Coast knows, men who drag their families to far-off climes in pursuit of an Idea seldom come to any good, while those familiar with At Play in the Fields of the Lord or Kalimantaan understand that the minute a missionary sets foot on the fictional stage, all hell is about to break loose. So when Barbara Kingsolver sends missionary Nathan Price along with his wife and four daughters off to Africa in The Poisonwood Bible, you can be sure that salvation is the one thing they're not likely to find. The year is 1959 and the place is the Belgian Congo. Nathan, a Baptist preacher, has come to spread the Word in a remote village reachable only by airplane. To say that he and his family are woefully unprepared would be an understatement: "We came from Bethlehem, Georgia, bearing Betty Crocker cake mixes into the jungle," says Leah, one of Nathan's daughters. But of course it isn't long before they discover that the tremendous humidity has rendered the mixes unusable, their clothes are unsuitable, and they've arrived in the middle of political upheaval as the Congolese seek to wrest independence from Belgium. In addition to poisonous snakes, dangerous animals, and the hostility of the villagers to Nathan's fiery take-no-prisoners brand of Christianity, there are also rebels in the jungle and the threat of war in the air. Could things get any worse?
In fact they can and they do. The first part of The Poisonwood Bible revolves around Nathan's intransigent, bullying personality and his effect on both his family and the village they have come to. As political instability grows in the Congo, so does the local witch doctor's animus toward the Prices, and both seem to converge with tragic consequences about halfway through the novel. From that point on, the family is dispersed and the novel follows each member's fortune across a span of more than 30 years.
The Poisonwood Bible is arguably Barbara Kingsolver's most ambitious work, and it reveals both her great strengths and her weaknesses. As Nathan Price's wife and daughters tell their stories in alternating chapters, Kingsolver does a good job of differentiating the voices. But at times they can grate--teenage Rachel's tendency towards precious malapropisms is particularly annoying (students practice their "French congregations"; Nathan's refusal to take his family home is a "tapestry of justice"). More problematic is Kingsolver's tendency to wear her politics on her sleeve; this is particularly evident in the second half of the novel, in which she uses her characters as mouthpieces to explicate the complicated and tragic history of the Belgian Congo.
Despite these weaknesses, Kingsolver's fully realized, three-dimensional characters make The Poisonwood Bible compelling, especially in the first half, when Nathan Price is still at the center of the action. And in her treatment of Africa and the Africans she is at her best, exhibiting the acute perception, moral engagement, and lyrical prose that have made her previous novels so successful. --Alix Wilber
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