Theresa

Theresa

Funny story. I'm in the bookstore the other day picking up Things Fall Apart which I've been putting off reading for 25 years. Figured it would be interesting to read after Poisonwood. The clerk, ringing it up, says "Things Fall Apart....I had to read that in high school." "How did you like it?", says I. "After the first chapter, I said I'd rather drop out of high school than finish this book", she said. Me: "So did you actually finish it?" She looks up and - "No...I dropped out of high school!"

Wow. Actually, it's not a hard read. I'm half way through and I've already discovered two or three things that I'm sure Kingsolver picked up on from this book.

Charlie

I will be back later.

I certainly hope that Nathan Price is not thought to be the typical missionary that has gone to Africa (or anywhere else, for that matter). He was bordering on deranged and led his family into a dangerous situation that eventually led to his losing everything.

The title is so appropriate--spreading a poisonous rash to all he encountered.....Ginny, I, too have gotten into the poison ivy and ended up in the hospital because of it!!! I am sure when I see the huge vines that cling to some of our trees here I will occasionally think of Nathan Price.

ALICE - If you're going to tackle Kingsolver's view of women in CONGOLESE society, then I'll be standing back and listening!! Now THAT'S ambitious! Heck - I must have some old placards from the sixties around here myself, I just might join you in you walk-about! One of the roles is, of course, that of wife, possibly one of many. This is certainly a major stumbling block for Nathan. Even after seeing his way to compromise with Tata Ndu over the baptismal rite, the concept of multiple wives was a deal breaker - and a major turning point in Nathan's stance vis-à-vis the village. The choice of missionary father certainly gives BK the perfect "sub-culture of American society" to explore the more extreme Western attitudes toward women doesn't it? You said: "As the novel moves on it is the Congo that presumably frees her [Leah] from the tyranny of the father and the values he represents." Frees them all, no? Nice take on Rachel, by the way. She certainly is a well-drawn type and I couldn't help but like her somewhat - as you like someone who you know only too well - who's transparent and predictable.

GINNY - I'd allow that Leah and Orleanna, at least, are "defined by [their] relationship to the father figure [and husband]". Early on, Leah admits that her father is "the anchoring force in [her] life," and that she craves to be her "father's favorite." After her devotion to Nathan has been established, this begins to change just as quickly. Orleanna's seems defined most by her guilt (the guilt from her weakness to protect her children from his destructiveness) - her voice is the present and introductory 'voice' to each Book. Rachel seems the center of her own universe and defines herself by the minute. Adah seems so apart that she's unsure how she fits in, really. Her invocation of Our Father, though, is not without irony. (Incidentally, in the Chinua Achebe book, the protagonist gets his start from a benefactor whom he calls nna ayi (Our father)). Ruth May, for her part, is just beginning to shape her personality. Nathan's "disgust" with his family is an outgrowth of his disgust with himself. There's no "pure light", only a seething darkness. When Nathan breaks the plate and accuses Orleanna of being "too fond" of it and advises her not to "waste her devotion on the things of this world." She seems to agree not only that she was too fond of it (she won't be that attached to anything ever again - except her children) but that her devotion to her husband is at an end. I think that while this is a novel about a family in the Congo, it's only incidental that the family is a missionary family. They could have been there on a diplomatic posting or a geologist or something. So the "meanness" you sense is not missionary meanness, but the meanness of this particular head of household. Now the social and political implications of this Western family being in the Congo quite naturally are played out most effectively as a missionary family. Nathan fulfills the dual imperialist roles of despot father and cultural chauvinist. The children's "struggle to understand" leads to an uncloaking of the Father in their eyes. Sure, they're being subjected to "abusive treatment". What may have once been seen as "for their own good" comes to be seen more as the impotent frustrations of an embittered and self-hating tyrant. As to "WHY Orleanna stays with him at all..." well - this is the age-old question that those of us who are NOT, thank God, abused always ask. But I don't think the book is (Ouch!!) "about the heathen in every man and why spouses put up with it." I for one, have no concern about one-sidedness here, that we're seeing this man only through the eyes of his children and wife, all females. I think we see him through the eyes of his predecessor and an entire village, and, ultimately through his own self-loathing.

THERESA - I think perhaps we cut Nathan too much slack if we have compassion enough for him to let "the war" be used as any kind of excuse. Yes - war does do terrible things "to one's mind as well as one's body". But this was a deeply flawed individual that, war or no war, would have found a way to salve his inadequacies with the misery of others, especially women. That's what coward's do.

JIM - I do think that BK did a great job with the "voices" in the novel, particularly Rachel and Ruth May Adah's the one whose voice didn't seem quite right to me at first, but grew on me. But then again - she's The One Who Does Not Speak! By the way, Nathan's the name, but it may as well be Our Father, the Tyrant Formerly known as Nathan. I too raised my eyebrows somewhat at BK going to some trouble to assure us that Our Father is not Her Father! But I'll take her word for it. I do think, though, that the actions of Nathan Price and the implications for EVERYONE in the novel speak volumes about him. He's heard loud and clear.

FLOYD - Having read Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart as a follow-up to Poisonwood, I look forward to your comments on "ethnocentrism [and] cultural imperialism."

HELEN - One of the things Kingsolver does really well is describe the Congolese adaptability and contrast that with the struggle of the Westerners to adapt. Well adapt against their will actually. Their purpose was to change the Congolese culture, and not adapt to IT. You mentioned "father knows best syndrome". The show was mentioned in the book somewhere - probably by Rachel!

SARAH - Do you think that, in breaking the plate, Our Father might have been saying to Orleanna: "Thou shalt have no other Gods before me?" That was her treasured link to "the world as she knew it" wasn't it? You mention faux pas "being typical of missionaries (at least earlier in the century) that they knew little about local custom and committed faux pas after faux pas upon arrival in "dark Africa." Yes. Also a theme in Things Fall Apart. The difficulty of language and possible different meaning of words depending on inflection is, of course, a major devise used in both novels. After all, Nathan's message "Tata Jesus is Bangala", by which he means Christ is beloved, is heard as Jesus is Poison (Bangala being the Poisonwood Tree). There's a very funny incident of this in the Achebe book. The white missionary is using an interpreter from another clan with a slightly different dialect than the one he is speaking to. When he says "myself", because of the dialect difference, the clan is hearing "my buttocks."!! Needless to say, the interpreter makes an ass of himself!

KATIE - I think BK's strongest writing is in the opening sections to each Book (the Orleanna reflections). You have chosen a remarkable selection from the opening section.

There - now I caught up!

Charlie

How many of you have ever been in the deep woods and came eye to eye with a deer, a moose about to take a drink??? How you and the creature both freeze. Maybe the ears flicker. BK has a beautiful description of this event. Then she describes how the mythical beast becomes real by being shot, stuffed, catalogued and put into a museum. Is this how Western Civilization makes it "real"? Was this our need to make the "Dark Continent" real? What once was a "unicorn that could look you in the eye" is now but a museum piece. A stuffed okapi. And what does the museum piece tell us? Nothing.

And what more can we say of post-colonialism than this: "walked out on Africa as a husband quits a wife, leaving her with her naked body curled around the emptied-out mine of her womb."

As for the Price's, they came and left no mark, but have been marked themselves. "We can only speak of the things we carried with us, and the things we took away." It's rare to have such a finely crafted opening that expresses the complete story, really an introduction and a summation - but leaves the telling to "others." It's really stunning, lovingly written, and just about perfect. What a start.

Theresa

Arnold - "But education also provides power to exploit others more skillfully." Achebe points this out quite dramatically in Things Fall Apart. The civil authorities use somewhat educated locals to oppress the clan. For them, it's a quick way to a position of authority - much quicker than the traditional tribal road.

Barbara - You're too kind as always! Some people don't deserve our understanding!

Ginny - No, I don't think that Orleanna's is THE voice of the book. Each voice tells a true tale and uncovers things for us. However, Orleanna's is the only voice from afar, with perspective, with hindsight throughout. And so it naturally takes a central place and is given our ear more carefully, I think.

An excerpt: Bibles for manioc - Foreign companies are being encouraged to help rebuild the country’s infrastructure in return for operating licences in the mining areas We are looking at a scheme of offering Bibles for manioc in the short term, until such time that the rural people are paid and then can pay cash for their Scriptures. We also want to develop our system of depots to be more effective; but it is early days yet, and we need to visit each region and each depot to establish what people need and what is available. We are hoping to take advantage of the way the crisis has forced people to turn to the Bible. People pray under pressure, and we want to be there with the Scriptures when people most need them. Unfortunately we cannot produce any Selections or Portions in the current economic climate.

Charles--sure she feels guilty about the circumstances that she and her family are in...he would have it no other way and feeds it daily as seen in the platter incident. If her guilt is strong enough then the situation doesn't change. I don't know where that guilt comes from, but it is obvious that it is there. When she finally dropped the guilt she could leave...

Jim--I am with you on your choice of animals- the parrot who is definitely a breath of fresh air and a voice that can not be silenced by the Father and the mongoose.

Once every few years, even now, I catch the scent of Africa. I've always been fascinated by this Proustian theme in literature. Orleanna's description (in Revelations) of this phenomenon is quite interesting. A confrontation. I'd never looked at it quite like that before. It is always sudden and from out of nowhere. But something has triggered it. Sometimes it takes quite an effort to figure out what. Even now she says. Yes. Even now, though not often, I'm standing at the bottom of the portable stairs, having just left the US Government Pan Am chartered flight into Tan Son Nhut Airport, Saigon. I'm suddenly awakened from my year long waking dream by the jolt of oppressive heat…I grew up in Florida….oppressive heat, the taste of dust on my tongue and the stench of what must be the worlds largest open sewer. We'd turned this beautiful country into an open latrine. So I know what she means by a knock-you-down-stand-still-scent. I awoke from that dream and haven't dreamed since.

My second favorite theme in literature is 'time.' BK remarks on the different cultural perception of time here - through Rachel: "They don't even know Sunday from Tuesday or Friday or the twelfth of Never! They just count to five, have their market day, and start over."And again through Orleanna: "Every fifth day was market day--not the seventh or thirtieth, nothing you could give a name like "Saturday," or "The First of the Month," but every thumb if you kept the days in your hand." It's the same in the Achebe book: Okonkwo's father would leave "for as long as three or four markets" and then return. Life is Planting, Harvest, Repair the dwelling, Rest, Planting, Harvest….

In the culture of the Congo, time is measured in market days and the agricultural seasons - food related chunks of their lives. In fact, "fufu", their staple food and time were the only things that were plentiful and taken for granted - they were "the center of life." Fufu WAS food - their sustenance. Anything else - an orange, a banana - was an "occasion." We have three square ocassions a day. You can't get much farther apart than that.

Charlie

My self-loathing/self-righteousness theory? I'm just full of amateur psychology. I have found that most highly critical people are at their core extremely lacking in self-esteem. The best defense is a good offense?

I think the figures on the front of the book are Orleanna and the four girls.

I can't imagine a mother who would allow her children to do the "Verses" for her.

JIM - Isn't it interesting that Adah's physical condition was not seen as anything particularly out of the ordinary in Congolese society (as opposed to Western society) whereas the very fact of her "twinness" (Baza!!) is quite an extraordinary thing to them (not a big deal in the West)? In the Chinua Achebe book, twins are put into earthen pots and left in the forest. It turns out that most of Nathan's "flock" are parents of (now dead) twins (or have committed the ultimate clan taboo - killing one of their own). Anatole had already gently pointed out to Nathan that his "flock" was mostly the lenkuza. People who had a need to change their luck through a new religion, or at least, cover all the bases!! Again, in Things Fall Apart, it's the efulelu who are the prominent churchgoers: "worthless, empty men." The efulelu was "a man who had sold his machete and wore the sheath to battle", the "excrement of the clan." In fact, the first woman to join the missionaries in the Achebe novel was pregnant for the fifth time - the first four had all borne her twins which were promptly disposed of.

Adah notes also, that NATHAN/NAHTAN and "Only Nahtan remains essentially himself, the same man however you look at him." Not so Hada or Lehcar, etc. The Congo changes them all. Only Nathan remains unchanged.

GINNY - Oh, I think the historical info is completely accurate, right out of the Frank Church Foreign Affairs subcommittee hearing on the Congo, right down to the aborted attempt to poison him with spiked toothpaste - kindly old Ike just didn't want to know about these things but tacitly sanctioned them. I remember when Lumumba's plane went down. My immediate reaction at the time was - CIA. (Yeah, ok - that was my immediate reaction to almost everything back then!!). Axelroot reminds me of that pilot that was captured in Nicaragua on a CIA mission some years back who was all over the TV. Remember that one? I've pictured Axelroot in my mind as looking like him. As far as the biblical references go, I did groan a little the town names (like Bethlehem where she had her first born) and there was another one also…

Ginny, is going to give us her Ruth May theory. Here's my Adah theory! (p139) - When she's late coming home and Tata Ndu reports that she has been eaten by a lion - she shows up just as Tata Ndu's religion is about to triumph over Nathan's. Instead, she wakes up from the hammock and comes forward. One god draws in the breath of life and rises; another god expires. Having just preached the parable of Daniel in the Lion's Den, Nathan's religion seems ascendant. Indeed, attendance does rise after Adah's miraculous reappearance. But BK leaves Adah's lion attack purposely ambiguous. A swish in the grass…a pounce…She became nothing…she felt her flesh being eaten…then Adah is at the house: "Nighttime in another life.". What does that mean? (p154) Nelson provides an answer. Her personal God protected her. (The idea of a personal God is plumbed deeply in Achebe). Jesus (her personal god) turned her into a bushbuck at the last minute - and transported Adah back to her house. She is reborn into another life. Well, this is a way to look at Adah's death-rebirth as a synthesis of BOTH religions. I don't think this is a coincidence. I believe it's purposeful. Later Adah decides she wants to be a doctor poet like William Carlos Williams. Here is an animated version of the WCW poem she quotes on P 170:

Do you think that Kingsolver uses guilt in some events that are just plain accidents? Why would someone have to be responsible for the death of Ruth May?

Off to work now---Theresa

theresa

Someone brought up the subject of adaptability, and I wondered at Rachel who somehow came to thoroughly represent a white African. At the end I couldn’t imagine her in any other environment but where she was. She would certainly have been a foreigner in Georgia. Somehow she found a way to skew her personality, her values, to conform to the realities of African life. In a way she was the ultimate survivor of them all. Changed as much or more than them all put together, but still essentially her 'self.' While Orleanna continues her struggle to cope with her African experience, Adah and Leah become each in their own way transformed by that experience - Rachel remains unchanged - and yet has become a part of the natural landscape. What does THAT say about the "cultural, social, religious, and other differences between Africa and America?" Something very interesting, I suspect.

And Ginny - sometimes I can't tell whether you are pulling our collective B&L legs. Can someone tell us if Sir Richard Burton (the original) was related to the late Sir RB the actor and sometimes paramour of Liz?? I seem to remember he was.

SARAH - I agree with your thoughts on Leah and wouldn't consider her "weak". Rather, she evolved and grew into Africa, whereas Rachel grew into "wifehood and adulteration". Into the system of marriage called "Monotony." Poor Rachel - her "hopes never got off the ground." Leah is as a flame tree whose "scarlet blossom(s)" have come to life.

There was a great old Masterpiece Theater, Search for the Nile or something, (Sir Richard Burton and James (?) Speake searching for the source...

There is a fabulous biography of Burton (the explorer) titled:CAPTAIN SIR RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON by Edward Rice. It was published in 1990 and I can recommend it very highly.

Burton was quite the character and one of his most notable achievements was a 17 volume translation of Arabian Nights.

In addition to his exploits,he was a British undercover agent.

The study of his life has fascinated me for many years & I have a small library of biographies in addition to an authenicated autograph of his signed at the HAMPSHIRE ARMS in Minneapolis Minn. when he was on a US lecture tour.

There is some controvery as to whether or not his wife actually burned his letters and there is currently a new biography of Isabel that indicates that she may not have burned the letters.

On one of his secret missions,he investigated the Mormons of Utah and wrote a book about it called "The City of The Saints"

 
Tell all the Truth but tell it Slant 

By Emily Dickinson
 
Tell all the truth but tell it slant-  
Success in Circuit lies  
Too bright for our infirm Delight  
The Truth’s superb surprise  
As Lightning to the Children eased  
With explanation kind  
The Truth must dazzle gradually  
Or every man be blind- 

Like Adah, Barbara Kingsolver, like it or not, tells the truth in this novel - and yes, she has her own slant.

Like a princess in a story, Congo was born too rich for her own good, and attracted attention far and wide from men who desire to rob her blind. The United States has now become the husband of Zaire's economy, and not a very nice one. Exploitive and condescending, in the name of steering her clear of the moral decline inevitable to her nature.

"Oh, I understand that kind of marriage all right," I said. "I grew up witnessing one just like it."

U.S. is to Congo as Our Father is to Orleanna and her children. This is her strong belief. This, I believe is her central impulse in writing this novel.

Orleanna was born too attractive for her own good and drew the attention of Nathan who certainly felt it his mission to steer HER clear of moral decline inevitable to her nature.

 
Each morning a missionary 
 advertise with neon sign, 
He tell the native population 
That civilization is fine. 
And three educated savages 
Holler from a bamboo tree 
That civilization is the thing for me to see. 

(Chorus) 
But,  
Bongo, Bongo, Bongo, 
I don't want to leave the Congo, 
Oh, no, no, no, no, no! 
Bingle, Bangle, Bungle, 
I'm so happy in the jungle 
I refuse to go. 
Don't want no bright lights, false teeth, door-bells, landlords, 
I make it clear 
That, no matter how they coax me, 
I'll stay right here. 

They have things like the atom bomb, 
So, I think I'll stay where I "om" 
Civilization, 
I'll stay right here!

Charlie

I've been using as my password since I got on-line a few years ago "selrac" which is short for Selrahc Llednew - my name spelled backwards - guess who I identify with?Now i'll have to change it!!

I think ya'll are being too hard on Rachel - she's a unrepentant self-centered Price, stunted in her growth - but she deserves some compassion here, I think. In Song of the Three Children, each has one chapter to make the case for themselves and they all speak a certain truth - even Rachel. She sure understood her father as well as, or perhaps better than the other children:

I like Orleanna's (through Adah)image of her three children as "lock, stock and barrel."
"Leah barrels forward, setting everything straight."
Adah "quietly takes stock."
"Rachel is clearly the one with locks on every possible route to defenestration" On this one I need help.

Etymology: de- + Latin fenestra window. Date: 1620. A throwing of a person or thing out of a window. Every possible route to...?? What does (Orleanna)Adah mean?

I, too, rather like Rachael. She was taken to Africa at a time that she would normally be starting to go out on dates and her biggest worry was about her hair and her clothes. In addition to leaving her home and her friends, she was trapped in a family where the father was mentally incompetent and the mother became totally overwhelmed in the situation. Rachael used the only method of escape she could find--and escape she did! I realize that she is not very likable to most people but she sure is a survivor.

Theresa

Unlike the dream of young Chiyo in Memoirs of a Geisha - the bearded man slides open the paper screen beside him which covers a window [": an opening in the wall to admit the light, a window, originally closed by two wooden shutters or by curtains"], allowing her to see out a window to the world - her dream had opened a window so that she now sees her life from a different direction, "forward toward the future" rather than "backward toward the past." Rachel forever sees her life as lost opportunities, she forever looks at her life "backward toward the past."

Ed, so what IS this kabuki play going on in Czechoslovakia?? History repeats itself, I guess. It seems defenestration is what is known as a nonce word - a word invented for a special occasion (the nonce), a disposable one time thing. The special occasion here being…..
On May 21, 1618 (hmmmm, almost 381 years ago to the day….)three Catholic members of the Bohemian National Council were thrown out of a window of the castle of Prague by Protestant insurgents, marking the beginning of the Thirty Years War.(from The Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins). Seems to have become something of a tradition in Prague. Say, there's a thought! Some nonce words are so good they hang in there and become a Real word. Or some political acts feel so good they become a tradition! Well - it's time for me to close de fenestra and night night.

>>>>Some medical definitions:

The description of Mobutu's death was terrific - reminded me of the death of Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane.

Although Adah, the believer in calculus ("the mathematics of change) warns us that "Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet. They are what we call civilization." - this is still a hopeful novel. Lumumba wanted to make the Congo "the heart of light." Instead of leading us into Conrad's "heart of an immense darkness" BK urges us, in the end, to "walk forward into [that] light."

More authenticite in the Congo??

Are you familiar with Alice Adams who passed away the other day in San Francisco?

Romance? I don't think so. No - Memoirs doesn't have the depth of Poisonwood, though.It's funny, we've had discussions with a number of recent books, where we questioned female writers drawing male characters and male writers drawing female characters. Here we have a male writer not only drawing a female character but I read the book and it read to me just like a memoir. I never felt the aurhors intrusion in the least - something I couldn't really say about Poisonwood, Man in Full.

It was one of my favorites in the collection of essays.