“I took a deep breath and told myself that a woman anywhere on earth can understand another woman on a market day. Yet my eye could not decipher those vendors: they wrapped their heads in bright- colored cloths as cheerful as a party, but faced the world with permanent vile frowns…However I might pretend I was their neighbor, they knew better. I was pale and wide-eyed as a fish. A fish in the dust of the marketplace, trying to swim, while all the other women calmly breathed in that atmosphere of overripe fruit, dried meat, sweat, and spices infusing their lives with powers I feared.” In the beginning of the second book, Revelation, Orleanna Price expresses her discomfort with being the minority in the African society. She says that any woman should be able to relate to another woman, but once she steps into the market place, Orleanna realizes how different she is compared to the women “in bright-colored” head wraps with frowns always on their faces. Not only are the appearances of the women different, but also their thinking and personalities. Within this part of the story, it is obvious that Orleanna struggles living in this society because she says she was “a fish in the dust of the marketplace, trying to swim” but “all the other women calmly breathed” in the atmosphere where they were most comfortable.
Also in this chapter, Orleanna’s true feelings of her marriage come out. When her husband is gone, rather than dreaming of his return, she is “dreaming of coffee.” She didn’t miss his physical presence of her husband as much as she missed having coffee when she was in America. Orleanna dreamed of going back to America via the river that could carry her “body down through all the glittering sandbars.” Orleanna also hung pictures of other families and homes in her kitchen because it gave her something to dream of. The kitchen was the chosen location for the pictures because there was no way that Nathan would ever be in the kitchen to help.
At the end of this book, it is evident why the title is Revelation. In the bible, the book of Revelation is about the events leading up to the end of the world. At the end of the reading, Congo celebrates their freedom as they are no longer going to be controlled by Belgium. Also, the family finds Methuselah dead. When Methuselah is found, Adah refers to him as “only feathers, without the ball of Hope inside.” Methuselah is a metaphor for the people of Congo now that they are free. When the Price family released Methuselah, he continued to return to them because he was not able to survive on his own, and eventually died because the family was not feeding him. Now that Congo is no longer being controlled by Belgium, will they survive, die, or turn to the Price family for help?
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