Lit Circle #2 Reflection

During class, we discussed Book 3: The Judges, in "The Poisonwood Bible."

The first thing we discussed was the differences between Brother Fowles and Nathan Price. We talked it over, and concluded that the main difference between the two of them is Brother Fowles’ interest in Congo’s culture and his willingness to adapt his teachings to better suit their culture and he was able to get most of the village to accept his teachings, whereas Nathan Price is too stubborn to alter his teachings and as a result, is unable to get the Congolese people to accept his teachings. Their “verse battle” demonstrated these personalities. “‘Don’t be a fool, man!’ Father cried. ‘That verse refers to the children of Israel.’ ‘Maybe so. But the image of the olive tree is a nice one, don’t you think?’” (252). This quote shows that Nathan refuses to take the scripture out of context, whereas Brother Fowles enjoys taking parts of the scripture and interpreting it in different ways. We also talked about how Leah appears to be changing greatly. First of all, she is beginning to doubt her father, like when she says, “If it’s all up to him to decide our fate, shouldn’t protection be part of the bargain?” (243). At the beginning of the book, she blindly followed her father, but now she is beginning to see that he is not that great of a man, and as her dedication to her father lessens, a void in her heart grows larger. It appeared that she began to fall in love with Anatole to fill that void. We thought this because of when she said, “Anatole’s name anchored me to the earth, the water, the skin that held me in like a jar of water” (310-311). After that, we discussed the symbolism of the ants that attacked the village. We compared them to the Congolese people through Anatole’s quote. “When they are pushed down long enough they will rise up. If they bite you, they are trying to fix things in the only way they know” (308). This basically says that the Congolese people are not bad people, but they are hurting white people because they are trying to take care of themselves the only way the know of, which is violence. Also, the ants swept through the village, cleaning the village of its filth, just like the Congolese people, who are cleaning out their country of white people. We also discussed the relationships between the Price girls. Leah and Adah don’t have a really good relationship, mainly because of Adah’s disability. Leah tends to insult Adah, among other things. The reason behind this is probably that Leah actually feels really guilty for Adah’s condition, and insults her to cope with the guilt. Also, Rachel doesn’t really like any of her sisters because she is very self-centered. As a result, she tends to be jealous of Ruth May, since Orleanna gives her the most attention since she is the youngest.
We had a lot more time to discuss this lit circle, since we extended our discussion over two classes. This allowed us to go more in-depth with the symbolism of the ants and the relationships of the sisters. I found this lit circle to be helpful in analyzing the ants and Leah’s change over the book.