Barbara Kingsolver

Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible discusses how cruelty can often act as the driving force for social or political change. It does so by introducing Nathan Price, a missionary from the state of Georgia that exhibits various negative character traits. His ignorance and stubbornness is displayed in “Book One: Genesis” when Nathan disregards Mama Tataba’s advice and cultivates a garden with Leah his own way. He classifies her wisdom as native stupidity and believes it to be evidence of how…

Steadily Fading Most people think that being in college and living far from their family is a relief. Lisa Parker’s “Snapping Beans” tells how a young lady’s college experience was different. It wasn’t a relief from home. The “hickory leaf still summer green” blown off the tree symbolizes the young lady because she left her comfort place when she left for college in the North. She blew away from her family, as the leaf blew away from the tree. Smoldering inside, wishing she could answer her…

Set in the Congo for the majority of the novel, The Poisonwood Bible uses this plot point to alter its various characters through their personalities and interactions with one another. By continually experiencing treacherous and stressful situations, Leah’s ideals changed and her true values came to light. With the shifting of said beliefs, she was eventually pushed to sacrifice the tradition embedded within her morals and a significant relationship that she once held dear. Over the course of…

Culture, it’s what define a nation. It also plays a key role in shaping the reactions and the events that play out through the story of The Poisonwood Bible. It can be evidently seen in characters such as Nathan Price. Nathan is witnessing the congo after years of turmoil caused by king leopold and his cronies. “For Europeans, Africa remained the supplier of valuable raw materials—human bodies and elephant tusks. But otherwise they saw the continent as faceless, blank, empty a place on the map…

the adoption of preconceived ideas that feminism is a sexist political movement against males on the basis of “systematic oppression” of females by males. Barbara Kingsolver uses the journey of the protagonist in her novel Animal Dreams as an allusion and rejection to this commonly held belief and to tell the story of its western origins. Kingsolver creates this allusion via the creation of references and a foil between the protagonist and Native American culture. Throughout the novel Codi’s…

Some questions don’t have a definitive answer. In Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver, Codi is a high school biology teacher who pushes for a reform of laws that has the potential to positively affect Grace. With the intention of finding an answer for “why people make the political choices they do”, the book represents two sisters, Codi and Hallie, attempting to make the world a better place, however meaningful each action is. While both sisters had very contrasting views, they worked for what…

forever. Some may find it preferable to the alternative, in fact, because to believe in a hope that will never liberate a person of his or her pain entirely may seem too heart-rending a path to take. However, author of the article “Stone Soup”” Barbara Kingsolver once said, “”Hope is a renewable option: If you run out of it by the end of the day, you get to start over in the morning.” Indeed, hope is not a fuel that can be exhausted; it is a pixie dust that sprinkles its magic on the world when…

It’s Not, by Barbara Kingsolver, the author speaks about violence and murder being solutions in today’s society. In The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, violence and death appear to be talked about often. Barbara Kingsolver and Tim O’Brien would agree that the United States likes to use violence as the number one solution. Both authors seem to oppose to the idea of war and violence in general as a solution for everyone's problems. In Life is Precious, or It’s Not, Kingsolver writes,…

be progress, however, it can be excruciatingly painful. So how-if it is so painful-could this led to progress and relief? Adversity is conflict, it is struggle, and once struggle occurs, the problem can be noticed. This is shown to be true by Barbara Kingsolver in The Bean Trees, Desiderius Erasmus in In Praise of Folly, and Dave Philipps in “Second Judge Blocks Trump’s Transgender Ban in the Military”. The struggle of adversity is necessary for change, and avoiding adversity is what leads to…

Fighting for change drives the advancement of social issues. If people fight tooth and nail they can make changes. Although, there are people and groups that ultimately hurt a cause then help it. The novel “Prodigal Summer” by Barbara Kingsolver is said to have both feminist and environmental movement ideas and themes. The novel is about the lives of three characters, Deanna, Lusa, and Garnett. Deanna and Lusa both get involved with men in their lives and both are older than them. Although the…