The Poisonwood Bible Leaves Me Thinking 8-20-2015 (Part One)

[ I am back working through my prison journal. It is out of order… Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. sch 10/5/2025] 

 I finished with Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible (HarperPerennial, 1999) this Monday. She kicked me around quite a bit - got me invested with the fates of her characters; with the Congo/Zaire; with the sins of America; with freedom and democracy; and American (and Dutch and Belgian and Portuguese) evangelism; and the atrocities done in the name of Christ.

Anyone reading Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness should read Kingsolver's novel. She mentions Conrad in her Author's Note and also notes it in her Bibliography. Yes, a novel with a bibliography! She wears her research lightly - she is far from Sinclair Lewis territory.

 Tolstoy came to mind with her interest in history. Congolese and American history; Africa and American history. She turns loose her Price family - father Nathan, mother Orleanna, and daughters Rachel, Leah, Adah, and Ruth May - into the Congo of 1960. Nathan never gets to tell his story. He assumes the role of a Southern Baptist patriarch to his wife and daughters. He becomes a Kurtz figure without the powers of Kurtz. I also was reminded of the Harrison Ford character in Mosquito Coast - so assured of America's rightness. That assurance gets amped up with the certitude - the pridefulness of the same kind of Christian (usually Protestant) missionary who will kill the villagers rather than let the village persist in sin. Is this a source - another - of our Vietnam policy of destroying the village to save the villagers?

Oh, yes, Ms. Kingsolver got me thinking of not only Congo/Zaire, but also Iran and Vietnam and Guatemala and Chile. We also get a brief glimpse into Angola. And once started, how anyone ignores the messes we have in Iraq and Afghanistan? Or the continuing problems of Africa? Scary, isn't it? How our foreign policy of belligerence and interference leaves death and destruction as our legacy. When do you think the pigeons will come home to roost?

The Price females tell their stories. One daughter dies. Two daughters never leave Africa. They all give different views of Africa and their histories. Of family relations, we get far different views. On the roles of women - mother, professional, Princess, intellectual - we get a discussion lasting a bit more than 30 years. I can see the literary roles for the daughters & mother, but I think they go beyond mere literary tropes. Here come the thoughts of Tolstoy: The characters have emotions, thoughts in reaction to the historical events around them, such as one will expect of characters as Kingsolver develops them. I wish I could do this.

sch

[10/5/2025: Continued in The Poisonwood Bible Leaves Me Thinking 8-20-2015 (Part Two). sch]