Not Alone!

In English class we are reading The Poisonwood Bible. This story has multiple narrators - all the female members of the Price family (if you need more information on the story, go here). Each girl has a distinct voice, and the way they narrate events reveals their varying personal outlooks on the world. The oldest daughter Rachel often pities herself, while Ruth May is too young to abstractly think and simply tells what she hears. Leah yearns to please her father, but her twin sister Adah prefers to develop independent opinions. Orleanna, the mother, feels trapped in her role as Reverend Nathan's wife. We readers receive so many opinions from these authors, but we also see Nathan's beliefs and the values of the Congolese people living among the Prices. One of the most crucial things for readers of The Poisonwood Bible to recognize is all the different viewpoints that are presented. While reading I've felt a faint curiosity to know what the author actually believes.

Today I had a speech team meeting. My coach had told me she had a few pieces picked out that she'd like me to read, and the first one she handed to me was the commencement address to Duke University's graduating class of 2008. The original speaker? None other than Barbara Kingsolver, the author of The Poisonwood Bible. Early in her speech, Kingsolver gives the traditional definition of success: "having boatloads of money." She goes on to name a large house, nice car, and spacious office as things that can be acquired with success. Later, she brings up happiness and its correlation to financial success, saying, "In the last 30 yeas our material wealth has increased in this country, but our self-described happiness has steadily declined. Elsewhere, the people who consider themselves very happy are... Mexico, Ireland, Puerto Rico, the kinds of places we identify with extended family, noist villages, a lot of dancing. The happiest people are the ones with the most community." To my gleeful surprise, I found that Ms. Kingsolver is an optimist like me! Her idea that financial security has no personal meaning, that it cannot bring happiness like a community can, resonated with me.

So how does this relate to The Poisonwood Bible? I now notice ways in which Kingsolver's optimism come out in her writing. Rachel is the most unhappy and most materialistic. When Ruth May falls ill, Leah and Anatole converse. Leah states, "Children should never die," and Anatole responds, "No. But if they never did, children would not be so precious... Also, if everyone lived to be old, then old age would not be such a treasure" (Kingsolver 231). Anatole does not have the power to prevent deaths, and rather than take sorrow in the helplessness, he cherishes children who survive - optimism! I'm very glad to have been introduced to Kingsolver's commencement speech. Analyzing Poisonwood as I continue to read it won't be as daunting as I previously saw it, because I've learned that the author and I are looking out the same window.