Thoughts on Religion and The Poisonwood Bible

I haven't written in a while. I guess I took some time trying to think about what would be worth writing about. So few things important to people are worth writing about. Then I picked up a book that seemed worthwhile. I've wanted to read "The Poisonwood Bible" since I first heard about it years ago. I'd read other of Kingsolver's works and liked them, and PB was always considered her best. I can see why.

I won't give anything away as far as plot is considered, as I hope to inspire someone to pick it up someday. I just thought I'd discuss some basic themes that I found quite intrigued me and sometimes inflamed my anger. Perhaps the most prevalent deals with religion, predominantly Christianity. Nathan Price is the bible-toting patriarch of the Price family, a man who has found his calling to lead the heathen tribes of the Congo from the clutches of evil pagan idols and sin. He is a missionary sent by the Southern Baptist Mission in Georgia for this sole purpose. He brings his family along, his wife and four daughters. The story alternates quite masterfully between the perspectives of these five women. As this story unfolds we begin to see Nathan for the cruelty he possesses. He leads his family with an iron fist - the self-proclaimed hand of God that he feels he must often use against his wife and daughters in order to keep the lost little female lambs from straying from the tiny trough from which he has kindly allowed them to feed. Nathan would appear to have no identity of his own. Rarely does he ever speak words of his own in the novel, merely words taken ver batim from the Bible. He is the epitome of the hell, fire and brimstone Baptist preacher. Just as Kingsolver, I do not mean to shed a negative light on Christianity, merely on the interpretation which seems far-too prevalent today, especially in America.

Nathan Price has become so entrenched in fulfilling his duties to God that he turns his back upon all he should love. He cares nothing for his daughters and views his wife as little more than the dumb bitch-hound that was given to him by God to keep the lambs coralled. And the lambs must be punished for everything, for they are weak, and God has no patience for stupid little girls. At times he woud seem to view women as the mere creation of God to test a man's patience. Nathan ridicules his wife for her beauty, calling her an overzealous harlot who has ensnared him after they make love. It is her fault that he fell into the temptations of the flesh and actually enjoyed it. Sex should only be for procreation. Even with one's own wife it should be seen as shameful and vile. If he derived pleasure then his wife is a whore. In his arrogance he closes his eyes to his own sins, such as brusing the faces of his lovely daughters. As a white, Christian male who knows the Bible from cover to cover he, of course, is destined for a place in heaven. It is everyone else who should suffer to earn salvation. His children slowly begin to resent God as they see him not as a protector but a persecutor at the hands of their own father.

Nathan's identity parallels the theme of American identity in the novel. The family enters the Congo believing in their own superiority. They will take seeds and show these poor dumb heathens how to grow their own food, by God! What results is a harsh lesson for the family. The African soil is ill-equipped for the crops of America - or any crops for that matter. The Congolese people have done their best to survive in a land that is all-at-once harsh, turbulent and unpredictable. The women of the Price family eventually allow their eyes to open to this fact, but Nathan never ceases to try to change the Congo. Nathan Price represents the part of America that hovers over the Congo like an angelic hand trying to bend the people toward their will behind a mask of good intention. Another white man in the story represents the truth of this mission. His greed and arrogant want bleeds those around him of all they have. He is the harsh, brutal will of the American government, a government which slaughters and burns the dead disregarding the sacred rights the Congolese hold dear. One could actually argue that an attempt to force the Congolese to adopt the Christian Jesus as "personal savior" is a similar slaughter of the ancient cultures of the tribes. Of course, one could never say this outright in America. Oops... I just did. This is becoming quite long, so perhaps I should break it up. I'll write more on "The Poisonwood Bible" later on.

-Amy