Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible
Directions: After reading the lecture, answer one of the main questions, which will appear in red. This question is due no later than Thursday, Apr. 19. Following that will be other questions, in black, which you should read and think about–they may help you answer the main question. However, you are not required to answer these questions in writing.
Your responses to other students’ answers are due by midnight on Saturday, Apr. 21. In order to get the full 20 points, you MUST respond to at least 3 or 4 other people’s postings.
This set of discussion questions is worth a possible 20 points. Remember: late answers receive 0 points, so post early 🙂
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Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible Link
WARNING! These discussion questions will reveal plot points. If you don’t want to know what happens, wait until you have finished the novel to read them.
1. Orleanna says, “Now I know, whatever your burdens, to hold yourself apart from the lot of more powerful men is an illusion…” (323). What does she mean? Why does she say this?
2. How much responsibility does Orleanna Price have for what happened to her family?
3. Which of the five storytellers–Orleanna, Rachel, Leah, Adah, and Ruth May—is the most reliable storyteller?
4. What political message is Barbara Kingsolver expressing in this novel? Do you agree with her?
1. What do the first few chapters tell you about the differences between the sisters?
2. Why do you think Kingsolver chose to tell the story from multiple points of view? And why do you think Kingsolver chose not to tell any of the events from Nathan’s point of view?
3. How is the opening description in the first paragraph of the novel a foreshadowing of the family’s experiences?
4. Orleanna says she had no life of her own (page 9*); earlier, she said she had only a life of her own (page 8). How can both statements be true?
5. In her first section, when referring to the things they took with them to Africa, Leah says, “My father, of course, was bringing the Word of God–which fortunately weighs nothing at all” (19). How are we supposed to take this statement?
6. Why does Adah refer to her father as “Our Father”?
7. How does each of the girls’ opening chapters introduce her personality? Address the themes of the novel? Reveal what her relationship with Africa will be?
8. What is the metaphorical significance of the garden Nathan and Leah try to plant?
9. How is Methuselah, the parrot, symbolic?
10. Would Nathan have had more success in bringing the villagers to Christianity if he’d been more flexible?
11. How do the political events surrounding the Congo’s independence affect the Prices, in their isolated village?
12. Why does Nathan refuse to leave the Congo when the Underwoods advise them to go? Orleanna wants to leave; why does she stay?
13. Adah often quotes “Red Wheelbarrow,” by William Carlos Williams. What is the significance of this poem?
14. What is the significance of the death of Methuselah? What literary allusions does Adah make in this section? (pp. 185-6) Why?
15. Why does Adah put such emphasis on words and their qualities? How is Nathan’s misuse and misunderstanding of words symbolic? Rachel also misuses words; does her misuse of them have the same implications as Nathan’s misuse of language?
16. Orleanna says that a motherless girl “has a freedom unknown to other daughters. For every womanly fact of life she doesn’t get told, a star of possibility still winks for her on the horizon” (192). Explain what she means.
17. How did Nathan’s war experience change him? Why?
18. Orleanna says, “I trusted too long in false reassurances, believing as we all want to do when men speak of the national interest, that it’s also ours” (210). Through the words of Orleanna, what warning is Kingsolver giving us?
19. Adah says, “Our Father has a bone to pick with this world, and oh, he picks it like a sore. Picks it with the Word” (213) Explain what she means.
20. What makes Leah begin to doubt her devotion to her father? How does this affect her?
21. How is Leah like her mother? How is she like her father?
22. Why is Leah attracted to Anatole?
23. How do things change for Leah and Adah the night the ants come?
24. How is Ruth May’s death a part of the larger political picture in the Congo?
25. What is the significance of the scene after Ruth May’s death, when Nathan is baptizing the village children and they are chanting, “Mother May I”?
26. How is the opening description in the first paragraph of the novel a foreshadowing of the family’s experiences?
27. Why does Orleanna refer to the okapi at the beginning? How is this a link to the end of the novel, as well as a thematic device? How is she using the okapi as a metaphor for Africa?
28. When Leah is pushing Ruth May in the swing, Ruth May’s shadow looks like an antelope (236). What does this passage foreshadow?
29. How is the last chapter foreshadowed in the novel?
30. How is Leah like her mother? How is she like her father?
31. To whom is Orleanna telling her story? (see page 383).
32. After Orleanna leaves Nathan, she grows flowers. How is this symbolic?
33. How does Adah react to the U.S. upon her return? How has the Congo changed her?
34. Adah says, “Every betrayal contains a perfect moment, a coin stamped heads or tails with salvation on the other side” (414). How does this apply to each of the Prices? To Africa?
35. How is Nathan affected by Ruth May’s death?
36. How does each member of the Price family blame himself/herself for Ruth May’s death?
37. Adah says that Rachel is the happiest of them all (442). Is she right?
38. In the absence of the Baptist religion, how does each of the Price women create her own “religion” in which to believe?
39. Rachel says she doesn’t feel the slightest responsibility for what happened to Ruth May (465). Do you believe her?
40. How does Nathan die? How is his death symbolic?
41. Adah asks, “How many of his sins belong to me? How much of his punishment?” (491). How would you answer this question for each of the women?
42. Adah says, “All human odes are essentially one. ‘My life: what I stole from history, and how I live with it'” (492). What does she mean?
43. Adah says, “The power is in the balance: we are our injuries, as much as we are our successes” (496). Explain what she means. Is she right?
44. “Everything you’re sure is right can be wrong in another place,” says Leah (501). How does that apply to this novel? To the world in general?
45. Why didn’t Rachel ever go back to the United States?
46. It’s obvious that the sisters are different; but how are they also alike?
47. Leah says, of her marriage to Anatole, “Our marriage has been, for me, a very long convalescence” (520). Convalescence from what?
48. How is the wooden okapi an appropriate gift for Orleanna? Does she realize how appropriate it is?
49. Why, in terms of literary symbolism, is it impossible for them to get to Kilanga? Why does Kingsolver have the vendor tell them there is no such village?
50. Why is the last chapter necessary to the novel? What is Kingsolver telling her readers?
*All page numbers refer to the 1999 paperback edition.