As The Poisonwood Bible came to an end, it was evident that each daughter has now found their place in the world. Although Ruth May is not alive, she is the narrator of the last chapter. Now, the “eyes in the trees,” Ruth May watches over her sisters and mother, keeping them all united.
During this reading, Adah exemplifies that handicapped people don’t necessarily always want to be “normal.” She stated that “we would rather be just like us, and have that be all right.” Adah’s statement clearly displays that she would have appreciated if people would have accepted her for the way she was, handicapped and all. This statement is indirectly the way that the African people were thinking when the Price family came into Africa to try to change them. Every person, no matter who they are, has a desire to be accepted for who they are, not for what others want them to be. People have told Adah that by changing herself, she had nothing to lose but her “chains.” Adah doesn’t agree with this because “if chained is where you have been, your arms will always bear marks of the shackles,” meaning that every part of your past will make you into the person you presently are. By trying to rid yourself of your problems or past you can “lose your story, your own slant,” or what makes you, you. Although Adah is no longer crippled on the outside, she hasn’t changed on the inside. “Tall and straight I may appear, but I will always be Ada inside. A crooked little person trying to tell the truth. The power is in the balance: we are our injuries, as much as we are our successes.”
Leah and Anatole are living happily with, now, four children. Making a complete transformation from the beginning of the book, Leah now realizes that what her father tried to do in the Congo was unrealistic and completely wrong. Although she has changed her views on life, she does admit “I suppose I loved my father too much to escape being molded to at least some part of his vision,” showing that parts of her father and his beliefs still reside inside of Leah. Nathan, Leah’s father, had a belief that the white person way of living was the best in all areas of the world. As Leah frequently tells herself, “everything you’re sure is right can be wrong in another place, especially here.” By frequently repeating this to herself, it is obvious that without the constant reminder that her way isn’t always best, she would turn into a person similar to her father. Leah wishes that she could go back in time and tell her father that what he was doing was wrong because “he was one of a million men who never did catch on” to what was so wrong with his actions. Nathan was oblivious to the fact that he was trying to control the African people rather than being accepting of their way of living. Through having four children, Leah has learned eventually “time erases whiteness altogether,” because each one of her kids are so different. Just like different cultures, each of her kids has their own way of interpreting situations and their own way of living.
According to Adah, “if Rachel ever gets back to Bethlehem for a high school reunion she will win the prize for ‘Changed the least.’” Rachel has made a few transformations throughout the course of the book, but overall she is still mainly focused on her successes and materialistic goods. Rachel’s main concern in life is making sure that the Equatorial is successful and that she makes plenty of money to live comfortably. It is obvious that Rachel is still self centered when she states, “others people’s worries do not necessarily have to drag you down.” While this may mean we should not get caught up too much in other people’s problems, I believe that Rachel truly doesn’t care about what other people are going though and is only concerned with herself.
“From the very first moment I set foot in the Congo, I could see we were not in charge. We got swept up with those people that took us to the church for all their half-naked dancing and goat mean with the hair still on, and I said to myself: this little trip is going to be the ruin of the Price family as we know it.” This statement by Rachel reveals that she has known all along how trying to change the Congolese people would affect her family. The whole story I believed that Rachel was naïve to what was going on around her, but overall, I truly think she had the best understanding of how this trip would turn out.
The closure for each women in the book comes when they return to the Congo to see Ruth May’s grave. A woman in town tells them that the road to Kilanga is closed, so “Kilanga is not reachable.” The closed road symbolizes the closure of the guilt that each woman had while in the Congo. Now is their time to move forward with their lives, instead of reliving the past.
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