ESSAY #1

     In The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, the Price family uproots themselves from their lives in Atlanta, Georgia to become missionaries in the village of Kilanga in Africa.  Leah Price, one of the daughters, devotes herself to her father, a reverend, and his faith throughout most of the beginning of the novel.  However, Africa brings challenges that Leah isn't accustomed to, and her character is tested and changed during her time there, away from her home in the United States.

     In Africa, Leah felt estranged from the culture and the population.  When she first arrived, she had no knowledge of the local village language, and she was ignorant of the customs or rules of society of the village.  For example, women in the village weren't allowed to hunt because it was considered a man's duty, but Leah insisted on hunting with the men.  As a result, the village priest pronounced curses upon the men who supported her, and the village was terrified for the next couple of days.  From this and other occurrences, Leah was introduced to the foreign superstition and sexism of Africa.  Furthermore, the religion that she was devoted to also brought skeptics because it was foreign, and the people of the village already believed in their own divine entities.  In addition, the Portuguese treated the Africans harshly to get them to mine riches such as gold and diamonds from the province.  The result was an uneasiness around white skin.  Leah had grown up in a part of the United States where there was more prejudice toward black skin because white skin was dominant.  Now, she was experiencing the opposite, a prejudice against white skin because of the black skinned majority's awful history with it.  She had never felt self-conscious of her skin before she lived in Africa.  In the book, Leah described how natives in the village's center gave her cold looks for the color of her skin and how relieved she was when they didn't notice her after a while.  Leah also observes that there are no girls her age to become friends with because in Africa, girls her age are expected to be already married and have children.

    Leah's experience in Africa enabled her to open up her mind and change her perspective on the world she thought she knew before.  Her father's increasingly cold temperament and lack of success in converting natives, combined with her new friendships with a village boy named Pascal and another named Nelson, leads Leah to doubt her father and consequently, his faith as she realizes that these boys don't seem to be the devil's children like she was led to believe.  In the United States, she recalls a cartoon about the people of Africa as cannibals, but she is enlightened to the truth that this is not at all representative of the natives.  Her family's move to Africa showed her a different world than what the society of the United States persuaded her into thinking it was like.

     Leah's adaptation to a new life in Africa shows how some people are blinded by what they think they know, and the only way they should form and opinion about an idea, a place, or a group of people is to expose themselves to first hand experience of it, even if you are thousands of miles from home.  In The Poisonwood Bible, Leah Price's beliefs and her perspective on life are drastically altered after she is exiled to Africa.