The Poisonwood Bible 661values. She comes to see these values as entirely
unethical because they are attached to her home
country, the United States. She learns to her horror
that the leader of her country, President Eisenhower,
has been actively engaged in arranging the murder
of Congolese politician Patrice Lumumba. She
says, “What sort of man would wish to murder the
president of another land? None but a Barbarian. A
man with a bone in his hair.” Leah also points to the
inhumanity of white Christians who, despite their
supposed attachment to Christian principles, lose
their credibility as Christians by supporting racial
hatred: “It’s dawning on me that I live among men
and women who’ve simply always understood their
whole existence is worth less than a banana to most
white people.”
Kingsolver shows in her text the sometimes
dubious ethical goal of Christian representatives
who turn Christian teachings into deadly dogma,
who hold onto a vision of Christianity that does not
take into account the need to adapt in an environ-
ment where traditional Christian rituals and values
just cannot fit. The novel’s leitmotiv, “Tata Jesus is
bangala” (Mister Jesus is poisonous), summarizes
well the impact of Christian “ethics” upon the
Congo: Christian nations organized the murder of
Patrice Lumumba who was elected prime minister
after the Congo’s independence from Belgium, and
was killed because he wanted political and economic
independence for the Congo against their will.
Sophie Croisy
Family in The Poisonwood Bible
The Price family is a traditional 1960s Baptist fam-
ily from the South of the United States. The father
and preacher Nathan Price is a patriarchal figure,
only breadwinner and master of the household, who
makes all the important decisions and expects obe-
dience from wife and daughters. He is obsessed with
“the education of his family’s souls” and “views him-
self as the captain of a sinking mess of female minds”
who, though unfit for education in his opinion, must
at least learn the ways of the Bible in order to stay
away from sin. He is a strong, masculine, patroniz-
ing, self-proclaimed messianic figure whose purpose
in life is to spread the word of God and enlighten
his congregation as well as his family.
When the family moves to Kilanga, Congo, in
order for the Reverend Price to conduct a Chris-
tianizing mission and teach the ways of the Western
world to the Congolese, the reluctance Nathan Price
encounters exacerbates his desire to convert and
submit the inhabitants of that region of Congo, as
well as his daughters, to the law of the Almighty.
His mission turns into an obsession and he becomes
“a potter with clay to be molded” who now ignores
the feelings and difficulties of his children and wife
in adapting to a foreign environment. As Orleanna
Price notices, “He was hardly a father . . . Their
individual laughter he coudn’t recognize, nor their
anguish.” Nathan Price’s lack of interest in his fam-
ily on the one hand and his growing cruelty toward
them on the other (a cruelty born out of his failure
to Christianize the Kilanga people, to own them
through conversion as he owns or wants to own
his own family) lead to a progressive dissolution
of the Price family. The father’s gradual abandon-
ment of his family (when he was once its cement)
leaves the daughters very much free to discover
the new world in which they now live. They are
free to redefine the concept of family outside the
framework offered to them by their upbringing in
the American South. Leah, for example, notices
that the children of a Kilanga family, especially the
girls, work and are concerned with issues that in an
American family are adult issues, such as finding
food and building houses. Thus, the Price daughters
become the household food gatherers. They take up
the traditional role of the father who, absent most of
the time, cannot be the breadwinner anymore. More
important, they prove themselves quick to learn and
apply themselves as they manage to find ways to
survive in a deadly environment. Moreover, as the
situation becomes more and more dire for the Price
family after the devastating aftermath of indepen-
dence, as Europeans are chased down and killed and
internal wars are raging after the death of real-life
leader Patrice Lumumba. Orleanna Price, usually
an obedient and passive wife, takes on a new, active
position as decision-maker in the family, daring to
speak her mind in front of her husband and get-
ting ready to take her daughters outside the Congo.
Once the sole commander of his family, Nathan’s
estrangement from its members and their gradual