The Poisonwood Bible: Key Passage Week 3

Passage: "Slowly Father raised one arm above his head like one of those gods they had in Roman times, fixing to send down the thunderbolts and the lightening. Everyone looked up at him, smiling, clapping, waving their arms over their heads, bare bosoms and all. Then he began to speak. It was not so much a speech as a rising storm."

This simile that compares Reverend Price to a god demonstrates how powerful he truly is. The simile is extended to compare his sermons and words to lightening and thunder. If you think back to Roman times and their gods, it is clear how their lightening and thunder created fear, establishing power within the people. Reverend Price uses such words to gain the respect and fear from the people in Congo. This simile is extremely meaningful towards the rest book, for it represents how powerful Reverend Price gets and why his family turns from him and this lifestyle

The Poisonwood Bible: Key Passage Week 2

Passage: "I would no different from the next one, if I hadn't paid my own little part in blood. I trod on Africa without a thought, straight from our family's divinely inspired beginning to our terrible end. In between, in the midst of all those streaming nights and days darkly colored, smelling of earth, I believe there lay some marrow of honest instruction. Sometimes I can nearly say what it was. If I could, I would fling it at others, I'm afraid, at risk to their ease. I'd slide this awful story off my shoulders, flatten it, sketch out our crimes like a failed battle plan and shake it in the faces of my neighbors, who are wary of me already. But Africa shifts under my hands, refusing to be party to failed relations. Refusing to be any place at all, or any thing but itself: the animal kingdom making hay in the hay the kingdom of glory. So there it is, take your place. Leave nothing for a haunted old bat to use for disturbing the peace. Nothing, save for the life of her own."

Orleanna expresses how the terrible situation she left had been partially her fault. She had known, deep down inside, how loveless and dominating her marriage had been, but she ignored the truth of it all to continue her status in society. The personification that was created within the country of Africa creates an emphasize on how difficult it was to go against religion and society. The world did not approve of her decision to change and therefore, disturb the peace. This quote characterizes Orleanna has an extremely strong willed individual that went against the mainstream of society.

The Poisonwood Bible: Key Passage Week 1

Passage: "And my husband, why, the hell hath no fury like a Baptist preacher. I married a man who could never love me, probably. It would have trespassed on his devotion to all mankind. I remained his wife because it was one thing I was able to do each day. My daughters would say:You see, Mother, you had no life of your own. They had no idea. One has only a life of one's own."

Orleanna Price describes a man that gave his soul to his congrugation. In loving his wife, he was inadequate, for there was nothing left of him after giving himself up to his work. Orleannas' daughters describe how their mother did not have a life of her own due to her willingness to serve her husband's instead. Orleanna exclaims how she does have a life of her own; it was her decision to serve another. The author uses diction to arrange the words of Orleannas’ daughters into a way that she could then describe her own life; what it had become.