Lit Circle #4 New Critic

“Leah and Adah and I started bickering practically the minute we met up in Senegal. We could never even agree on where to go or stay or what to eat. Whenever we found any place that was just the teeniest step above horrid, Leah felt it was too expensive. She and Anatole evidently have chosen to live like paupers. And Adah, helpful as always, would chime in with the list of what disease organisms were likely to be present” (477-478).

This passage is significant because it shows the contrast in the Price sisters. For example, Rachel’s reference to the inns as “the teeniest step above horrid,” reflects her pampered nature and general pessimistic view of Africa. Whereas Leah’s response on the inn’s cost shows her adaptation to African life, because she has probably been living in poverty so she doesn’t care what the quality of the lodgings are as long as it has a roof and is cheap. Adah’s response shows her personality since instead of joining in on the direct analysis of the lodgings, she looks beyond that and sees the diseases in the lodgings, which reflects her out-of-the-box thinking. It might also suggest that she is giving up her obsession with poetry and palindromes with an obsession for science. This passage is also significant because it shows that although they have grown up, most of the traits they had in childhood are still with them, either exactly the same or slightly evolved. Rachel had always had a pampered attitude, which still remains the same after growing up. Leah had always been very accepting of the Congo, and now she has married a Congolese man and is completely accustomed to the lifestyle. And Adah has always viewed things differently than the normal person, and her observations of diseases shows that this remains the same. These differences of personalities apparently have been growing larger over the years, and as a result, will probably result in the Price family’s complete detachment from one another.

“She pulled her hand out of mine so she could wipe her eyes and blow her nose. ‘I know that!’ She sounded mad. ‘The people in that village asked him to leave a hundred times, go someplace else, but he’d always sneak back. He said he wasn’t going to go away till he’d taken every child in the village down to the river and dunked them under. Which just scared everybody to death. So after the drowning incident they’d had enough, and everybody grabbed sticks and took out after him. They may have just meant to chase him away again. But I imagine Father was belligerent about it’” (486).

This passage is significant because it is the closure of the whole Congo event. The death of Nathan signifies the end of a mistake that had been costly to the Price family. Leah’s crying shows her love for her father, but when she told of his death, her anger showed that she knew what he was doing was wrong. Basically she loved her father but cursed his mistakes. Nathan’s death wasn’t a matter of what would happen, but when it would happen. Since Nathan is so stubborn in his beliefs, it could be inferred that the only way he would leave would be when he was forced out by the people he was trying to “save.” Also, by killing the children by baptizing them, he has hurt his mission more than helped it, since now the Congolese view Christianity as truly evil, which proves that doing something right the wrong way is just as bad as doing something wrong.