Books
A complex novel about faith, family and dysfunction
THE POISONWOOD
BIBLE By Barbara Kingsolver HarperFlamingo, 543 pages,
$26 |
By JUDITH BROMBERG
It is hard not to feel partial to one or another of the narrators
of this story -- Barbara Kingsolver uses a total of five to describe a Baptist
familys mission trip to the Congo in 1959.
The technique of multiple narrators has a rich history in American
literature -- Faulkners The Sound and the Fury comes to mind --
but unlike Faulkners work, in which each of four characters has one
section to recount events of three particular days, Kingsolver intersperses
chapters from each of the five to tell their story of five years in the Congo
and the aftermath.
Kingsolvers Price family is, however, just as dysfunctional
as Faulkners Compsons and just as dominated by a tyrannical
patriarch.
For reasons that only later become clear, the Reverend Price
insists on moving his family of wife and four daughters to the village of
Kikanga in the Congo against the Baptist mission leagues advice. With
virtually no support system, they go into a place on the verge of political
breakdown. The family, now minus one child, disintegrates with the country.
Mrs. Price, Orleanna, has the fewest chapters, albeit the most
poignant and haunting -- some apologetic, all reflective on what has gone down.
It is left to the daughters, teen-queen Rachel, twins Leah and Adah, and the
youngster, Ruth May, to tell the tale.
Narcissistic Rachel, whose prize possession is her mirror, takes
everything as a personal affront. Leahs is the voice of wisdom, common
sense and direction. If the family had a magnetic center it would be Leah. She
courts her fathers favor above the rest but turns out to be the most
rebellious. Little Ruth May narrates from the narrowest perspective, but she is
not without insight.
My favorite is Adah. Besides being crippled (she drags one leg due
to a birth defect), Adah doesnt speak. She can, but she doesnt.
Adah is the cynic, the wry humorist, the caustic commentator who
is as disdaining of her father as her twin is fawning. She who doesnt use
words is most fascinated by them, word play, puns and palindromes. In fact, she
prefers to think of herself as Ada for its palindrome
possibilities. Her palindrome for her father is the amen enema.
There is so much to say about this book. There are the rich
literary allusions Kingsolver employs, not the least of which is Conrads
Heart of Darkness. (The required summer reading for my senior advanced
placement class next year is going to include The Poisonwood Bible and
Heart of Darkness). But the title deserves exploration because it leads
us to the thematic center of the book.
The first mention of the poisonwood comes up in connection with
the garden planted in the Congo by Nathan Price, which he expects to duplicate
the kind of gardens he had cultivated in Georgia, thus transforming African
horticultural practices. It is Nathan, however, who is transformed,
despite repeated warnings, by exposing his bare skin to the benign looking
plant that causes severe rash and itching, known as the bängala --
the poisonwood.
Price never bothered to learn the language of the people to whom
he was preaching the gospel. He relied on a translator. But on those occasions
when he distrusted the translator or felt moved to speak directly to his flock
he would end his sermons with, Tata Jesus is
bängala.
Now, bangala without the umlaut is something precious.
Bängala, with it, is, of course, poisonwood. Jesus is
poisonwood! he would shout to the sky.
Heres Adah on her father:
Our father has a bone to pick with the world, and oh, he
picks it like a sore. Picks it with the Word. His punishment is the Word, and
his deficiencies are failures of words -- as when he grows impatient with
translation and strikes out precariously on his own ... in his wildly
half-baked Kikongo. It is a dangerous thing.
The Reverend Price was a dangerous man, not only with the
language, his garden, the poisonwood and his people, but with his
wife and daughters, often using a heavy hand to work his will. His brand of
missionary work was, first of all, self-serving and used Christianity as a whip
to bend or break African culture to Western beliefs.
His antithesis in the mission field was his predecessor in
Kikanga, a spoiled priest figure who was as beloved among the
Congolese as Price was disdained. Fowles had, in a sense, gone native. He
married and now ministers from his houseboat up and down the river to the
humanitarian needs of the people, without personal agenda.
When the insurrection erupted and whites were ordered out of the
country, Fowles came at personal risk to evacuate the Prices, only to have the
offer refused. It was thus left to each family member ultimately to find her
own way out. Carry us, marry us, ferry us, bury us -- these are the four
ways to exodus for now, mused Adah.
In the seven major sections of the book, each biblically named,
Kingsolver tells two stories. The first, of course, deals with the family and
their experiences. Leah promised that when I am a grown-up American with
a backyard garden of my own, I shall tell all the world the lessons I learned
in Africa. They all do. Beyond that, Kingsolver, as do the Prices,
becomes preoccupied with the deteriorating political situation, and as a
sub-text, is intent on exposing the culpability of the United States in
destabilizing the region. She lived in the Congo with her family in the early
1960s. In an article in the New Times Magazine she is quoted as
saying:
If I were to write a nonfiction book about the brief
blossoming and destruction of the independence of the Congo, and what the CIA
had to do with it, then probably all 85 people who are interested in the
subject would read it. Instead I can write a novel thats ostensibly about
family and culture and an exotic locale. And its entertaining, I
hope.
It is!
Ultimately, she brings the Price women into the present along with
the still deteriorating situation on the African continent. Here, still
self-centered, but now pragmatic Rachel has one of her rare insights. You
cant just sashay into the jungle aiming to change it all over to the
Christian style without expecting the jungle to change you right back. It
is at the point -- when the novel turns political and the remaining Price women
are coping with those changes -- that things get a bit belabored. But
dont let this quibbling dissuade you from reading this marvelous book,
her best to date, not only in depth of story and character development but
richness of style and language.
To return to theme: Adah, in her adulthood, besides being a
specialist in infectious diseases, has become a collector of books famous for
their misprints. Among them are Bibles variously known as The Camel Bible, the
Murderers Bible, the Bug Bible and so forth, all named for their
egregious misprint.
I cant resist these precious gospels. They lead me to
wonder what Bible my father wrote in Africa. We came in stamped with such
errors we can never know which ones made a lasting impression. ... Believe
this: the mistakes are part of the story. I am born of a man who believed he
could tell nothing but the truth while he set down for all time the Poisonwood
Bible.
Despite the reverend and his poisonwood, the Price women, to some
extent or other, like Faulkners Dilsey, endured. The same cannot be said
for the Congo.
Judith Bromberg, a regular reviewer for NCR, teaches
high school literature and composition in Kansas City, Mo.
National Catholic Reporter, March 19,
1999
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