Kate Kortum

AP English Literature IV
Williams Period 6
23 October 2018
Poisonwood Bible Take-Home Essay – Prompt II

Justice and injustice, self-defined pillars of life, guide our choices and responses to the

world around us. The definitions created by those who have been instilled with true

understanding, love, and compassion act powerfully on worthy causes and create great change.

But those whose values are warped often act upon perceived justice and injustice in an impulse

and twisted manner, leaving a deep bruise in the world around them. In the novel The

Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver Nathan Price, a missionary on a trip to Kilanga, sets

out on bringing his form of justice, Christianity, to the godless members of this community, but

instead of successfully converting and helping this community, Price actually ends up bringing

more injustice to the community members, the members of his family, and himself.

Although Nathan Price believes he is bringing justice to an injustice ridden community

by preaching Christianity, he is acting on false and selfish beliefs which in turn brings great

injustice back to the Kilanga community. Nathan Price confidently stresses that "American aid

will be the Congo's salvation” and that his bringing of justice is much needed and in fact a highly

charitable and honorable act that others should model. Nathan comes to find out, though, that his

‘charitable’ acts of bringing Christianity are not only unwanted, but also not beneficial. He first

finds out that his plans of spreading his strict fundamentalist Christianity is not working out the

way he wants it to. He finds out that "There are Christians and then there are Christians’, in

which he is implying that there are worthy fundamentalist Christians like him, and then there are

those who use the faith for their own personal benefit, which many Kilangans are doing as they

are desperate for some sort of salvation. In addition, Price finds out that even other local
Christian leaders are critical of his ways. Tata Ndu, for example, who feels that “bringing the

Christian word to these people is leading them to corrupt ways” is completely critical of Prices

strict hypocritical teachings, seeing the real outcomes instead of the warped ones that Nathan

Price sees and believing that his teachings do more harm than good. Price comes to realize his

mistakes when he wonders "How did this curse come to [him], when it's God's own will to

cultivate the soil!". When wondering how all of his teachings came crumbling down into a failed

community, Price conveniently forgets that the bible doesn’t preach for one to force religion on

others and wonders how his ‘charitable’ and ‘well-intended’ project has failed him. This series of

truly believing he is doing good for the community, then ignoring when the community is

dissenting of his teachings, and finally blaming it on an unwarranted curse shows Nathan Price’s

truly warped, static, and hypocritical view of justice and injustice.

In addition to Price truly self-illuminating his own warped and detrimental view of justice

and injustice as well as his own unsuccessful attempt at bringing justice, other major characters

throughout the novel continually plead to Nathan Price the harm he is doing, leading him to be

truly unaffected by his justice journey. Adah, who consistently throughout the novel bluntly and

even happily illuminates her father’s shortcomings, reveals that they “offered to feed their

children to the crocodiles... for them to know the Kingdom”. Adah reveals Nathan Prices

hypocrisy of believing that he, as a white Christian man, is innocent and simply doing good

deeds for the ignorant and godless native people. To the Congolese, however, white people like

Nathan have offered to do terrible things to their children to honor a god the Congolese do not

know, leaving the Congolese in a hard position to trust white people, and specifically the prices.

This illumination of hypocrisy and Nathan Prices continued ignorance furthers the idea that

Nathan is wholly not shaped by his unsuccessful search for justice.

 The novel as a whole is shaped by Nathan Prices search for justice in the godless

Kilanga. The progression of Nathans continued hypocrisy, ignorance, and unsuccessful search

for justice creates a stark juxtaposition to the successful endeavors of the Price children’s

searches for justice after being detached from Nathan Prices toxic teachings and mission trip.

Justice as a concept in the novel is repeatedly wrongly defined by Nathan Price in the face of

failure and backlash. Although William Styrons novel tells us that life is a “search for justice”,

one must remember that justice, like we see in Nathan Prices journey, is not a universally defined

concept, which leaves room for Nathan Prices, as well as many others, selfish and ignorant

imposition of perceived justice.