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Women In The Poisonwood Bible

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“The Congolese sense of balance is spectacular” and that, too, becomes true for the five female narrators in Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible (Kingsolver 107). The intricate and diverse nature of the women’s relativity creates a novel that consists of a fickle balancing act. The five narrators are similar to the year rings on trees as they experience daily life, but then grow from the previous narrator’s perspective, or in the case of trees, the previous years. A sturdy thematic structure is created by the narrators, Ruth May, Leah, Rachel, Adah, and Orleanna Price, that supports a complex storyline made of different observations of the Congo. In The Poisonwood Bible, the quintfecta of narrators, a perfect group of five, gives structure …show more content…
The most apparent limitation of the narrators is Adah’s limp as she is seen tediously teetering through the village. Adah’s limp deprives her of a real identity as she is viewed as a “lame gallimaufry” to her conservative parents. She counterbalances her lack of identity by absorbing the life around her as her limp literally forces her to move slower through life. Although Adah discovers after her time in Africa that the limp was a mental stigma brought on by herself, she continually observes the perfect balance of the African women. Adah notices that the village women are “pillars of wonder, defying gravity while wearing the hohum aspect of perfect tedium”(31). Her observation of the women reflects the asymmetry between her sisters and herself, and the village women. Practicing to be like the Kilangans cannot create a societal balance for the Prices as their light skin tone defeats that battle entirely, and the women do not have figure like Reverend Price who annihilates their opinions. Upon reflection of their time in the Congo, the female family members realize that “[they] have given up body and soul to Africa”(474). The body and soul is what the pests of Africa took from the Price family. Nonetheless, the epiphany awakens the women to a truth that is reflective of their constructive narration because they gradually strive to emulate the women, who carry objects on their heads, through their decisive narration. As the narrators realize that their balance is weak in comparison to the African women, they realize that “[they] brought all the wrong things” to Africa (65). Rather than bringing along a sense of structure, the Price women have to create it on their own. The mental capacity of the women is tested by the Congo just as

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