missionary position: Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible, The

College Literature, Summer 2003 by Ognibene, Elaine R

"Our Father speaks for all of us, as far as I can see" (Kingsolver 1999, 32), Adah says as she begins her analysis of Nathan's behavior in Kilanga. Not only does Nathan silence his family, but he insults them and has since the time of the twins' birth. Adah sarcastically surmises her father's attitude about her own condition: "Our Father probably interpreted Broca's aphasia as God's Christmas bonus to one of his worthier employees" (34). She too comments upon her father's garden fiasco, his distance from and lack of concern about family members, and his passion for the Apocrypha. However, Adah's stories about "The Verse," her father's paradoxical sermons, and his persistent insult and abuse of family all connect, and each adds a specific dimension of Nathan's character that relates his behavior to broader public events.

"The dreaded Verse is our household punishment," states Adah, "we Price girls are castigated with the Holy Bible" (Kingsolver 1999, 59). Nathan writes some scriptural reference for the child-offender; the offense could be any act, from painting one's nails to saying damn, that "Our Father" considered a sin. Then the "poor sinner" must copy "Jeremiah 48: 18 . . . and additionally, the ninety-nine verses that follow it" (59). Her satiric commentary on her father's preference for "his particularly beloved Apocrypha" slides into a reductio ad absurdum set of questions that parallel Nathan's "impressive" outcomes with her own "grocery sums in the Piggly Wiggly" to the case of the "cursing parrot" Methuselah who was "exempt from the Reverend's rules. . . in the same way Our Father was finding the Congolese people beyond his power. Methuselah was a sly little representative of Africa itself, living openly in our household." Adah concludes with delicious wit: "One might argue, even, that he was here first" (60).

From "Genesis" through "The Judges," Adah describes her father's ignorant errors as he attempts to convert the villagers to his point of view. Her palindrome for Nathan's sermonizing, his "high-horse show of force" is the "Amen enema" (Kingsolver 1999, 69). As the Reverend towers over the altar, Adah watches the congregation stiffen, and recalls the dead fish on the riverbank, one of her father's conversion mistakes. Nathan promised Kilanga's hungry people "the bounty of the Lord, more fish than they had ever seen in their lives," but he executes "a backward notion of the loaves and fishes," sending men out to pitch dynamite in the river. The villagers did feast all day, but there was no ice to save the thousands of fish that went bad along the bank. Nathan's destructive act won him no converts. To Adah, he appeared incapable of understanding why, just as he could not understand how saying "words wrong" led only outcasts to his flock.

Nathan's method is his meaning and that is his mistake, according to Adah: "Our Father has a bone to pick with this world, and oh, he picks . . . it with the Word. His punishment is the Word, and his deficiencies are failures of words. . . . It is a special kind of person who will draw together a congregation, stand up before them with a proud, clear voice, and say words wrong, week after week" (Kingsolver 1999, 213-14). Adah observes the Reverend shouting: "TATA JESUS IS BANGALA!" every Sunday, while people sit scratching themselves in wonder. "Bangala means something precious and dear. But the way he pronounces it, it means the poisonwood tree. Praise the Lord . . . for Jesus will make you itch" (276). The irony seems clear to all but Nathan. He fails to see how the language of the region, rich in tonal ambiguities, describes far better than his English the complex antitheses that face people in his congregation. He expects only that they, like his family, will do as he teaches.