"In the beginning God created..." are the first words in the bible, but in the Poisonwood Bible the first words are "Imagine a ruin..." The books are already crossing eachother's paths but in opposite directions: it's not beginning with an amazing creations, but a strange ruin "...as if it never happened."In the first paragraph we also see both the "garden" (forest) and the serpent ("glide of a snake belly on a branch"). I'm thinking now: all the story needs now is a woman to come along and be tempted or show a sign of sin. Then what do you know? Here comes not just a woman, but "...four girls in tow...they are pale, doomed blossoms...Be careful. later on you'll have to decide sypathy they deserve. The mother especially-watch how she leads them on, pale-eyed, deliberate." Did you catch that? The mother is leading, not a man that knows better; right from wrong, but four girls that still have their innocence. They are "doomed blossoms...The mother especially-watch how she leads them on, pale-eyed, deliberate." To me it sounds like she is either blind to her sins or knows them, but still chooses to walk into them blindly setting a bad example for the girls following her. Could this be foreshadowing? Maybe something in the boundries of swearing when she's mad at herself can rub off and take effect on the girls. Maybe it already has planted a seed by the way they always seem to have to cover for her. "None of us could let [father] in on that awful secret. Not even me(Leah)and i know i'm the one to turn my back on her the most."...once in a great while we just have to protect her. Even back when we were very young i remember running to throw my arms around Mother's knees when [father] regaled her with words and worse..."
There is a different chapter for eacher girl and their opinions, thoughts, and reactions to similar events. Just like in the bible when a story or event will reappear in a different chapter but from another person's perspective with a whole new insight on it. I don't remember if it was said how old Ruth May is but it shows she if young because of how innocent her chapters are."In sunday school Rex Minton said we better not go to the Congo on account of the cannibal natives would boil us in a put and eat us up...Our sunday-school teacher Miss Bannie told him to hush up. But...she didn't say one way or the other about them boiling us in a pot and eating us up. So i don't know." Just like in "Huck Finn" when Huck believes just about anything and everything Tom tells him because he is a role model and older. Children just assume us old people know it all and if we say it's so-it's so. Miss Bannie is Ruth May's Tom Sawyer and because Miss Bannie never corrected Rex, Ruth May remains confused about the truth of the situation.
Rachel makes a comment about all the black faces setting on her father "...as if they all were shiny, dark plants and his red head was the sun." The refferance to "dark plants" could be based off of the sin their lives and the lack of understanding about christianity and what the Price family believes. The father, having a red head that was "the sun" could show him as a christ figure? The Price family is a white family in a black community, a light in the darkness, and the father is the head of the family; teaching the gospel to a lost "world" trying to make them understand the life of living for God. The father has complications because of the difference of language in his new surroundings and he needs to learn the ways of the people before they learn his. Jesus came to the world not to just spread the word of God but to live as we do and truely understand what is it takes to live the lifes we do. When Jesus taught, some people wouldn't be able to grasp what he was trying to say. For instance being "Born again" A man asked how oen was supposed to reverse time, become a baby, and go back into his mother's womb. He didn't understand the concept of dying to your old life, or to your flesh, and starting a new one living for God.
Adah is probably my idea of an incredible girl! I can relate to her, oddly, at times and it's amazing the things she can do but doesn't let anyone know who she is on the inside because it's hard for her to express herself because, for a "normal" person, the main way we express ourselves is through voice and words. The thing she understands and her mind becomes at times, are poems. She uses amazing imagery with her words in her chapters: "Sunrise tantalize, evil eyes hypnitize: that is the morning Congo pink." "...sky bleeds, passes out, goes dark, nothing exists. Ashes to ashes" "...the pink sunrise surprise." She humors herself but only she knows when she's laughing. "Hah! I can laugh very hard without even smiling on the outside." So this shows she is even more quiet then other people think she is.
