But being in the Congo, those pets can be deadly and the people that she spies on could be dangerous. Like the cake mix, these innocent American childish habits should have been left behind and replaced with information about the Congo. Kingsolver wanted Ruth May to continue living her own innocent lifestyle by keeping pets and spying to show how Nathan and Oleanna (her parents) have made a mistake coming to the Congo without any previous knowledge, and how Americans can be tragically misinformed.
Book two, The Revelation, is meant to describe what the members of the Price family learned in the Congo. While Ruth May’s chapters were short in book one, the length of her passages started to increase as her adventure went on and as her growth progressed. Her chapters give insight to the wonderment of a child visiting a jungle but from the perspective of viewing the surroundings like a zoo instead of real life. The purpose of a zoo is