The Poisonwood Bible Analysis

Kingsolver makes the Poisonwood Bible a unique experience by telling the story from five different points of view. She tells the story from a mother and four daughter’s point of view. Each of the characters portrays the story in their own distinct way. The story is told by either Orleanna, Adah, Ruth May, Leah, or Rachel and they all speak in the first-person. The husband of Orleanna and father of the four girls, Nathan Price, is the only member of the Price family who doesn’t have a voice in this story.
There are some distinct advantages of using multiple narrators and Kingsolver uses these advantages brilliantly. One of the main advantages of having multiple narrators is that each one has their own distinct tone. In some novels having five …show more content…
Even though they all have their distinct personalities and are hard to mistake, it’s a lot harder to keep up with so many different characters views and opinions. If it was one or two narrators it would be a lot easier to keep up with, because five is a lot of different people to keep up with. When there is only one or two, the reader remembers each narrators precisely. While it isn’t that easy to mix up the narrators, it still takes a little more effort to keep up with all of them. One major disadvantage to having that many narrators is that the reader only hears that part of the story by only that narrator’s point of view. The only voice the reader experiences is the narrators and doesn’t get to see all the details of what the other narrators are going through at the time. All the narrators told from first person persepective and there was no omniscient narrator who could clarify and verify each one of the narrator’s stories. Each one of the girls have their own individual biases towards the western culture or their father. For example Ruth May and Leah at the beginning take their father opinion, while as Adah and Orleanna question his work and have