The Poisonwood Bible

Leah considers the many contributing factors that led to the dramatic confrontation between her father and Tata Ndu, namely the drought, hunger, ants, and recent elections. Tata Ndu arrives at church and interrupts Reverend Price’s story on Bel and the Serpent, a story taken from the apocrypha in which Daniel uses ashes to prove that the priests of Bel were eating the offerings themselves. Tata Ndu calls for a vote on whether Kilanga will accept Jesus as its lord and savior. As Reverend Price blusters and rants, Leah wonders why she had ever wanted to be close to him and prays only that he will never lay a hand on her again. When he insists that this is not the way things are done, Tata Ndu explains that the way things are done in America are different from the ways of the Congo and that if they claim that elections are good, they cannot protest the results. In the Price family, Ruth May votes for Jesus, but no one else votes. Jesus loses the vote, eleven to fifty-six.

Rachel blames Leah for causing drama in the family. Due to the drought, the entire village plans to hunt together. Leah wants to participate with her bow and arrows, but hunting is traditionally seen as a masculine pastime. Anatole argues that what matters is that meat they provide, but the elders, including Tata Ndu and Tata Kuvudundu, insist that a female hunter would be unacceptable. Reverend Price tries to insert himself in and turn the event into a prayer meeting followed by a hunt, but he is ignored. After arguing that Leah is a good shot, Anatole asks “whether you should kill a rat for its skin or for being a rat,” but Tata Ndu says that “if it runs in a rat’s skin it is a rat” (338). The people argue about foreigners, the army’s takeover, and prison.

The people decide that, rather than following their tradition of talking it through until almost everyone agrees, they will make the decision by vote. Anatole is against voting: “even if Kilanga ran one white family out of town, there were a million more whites in the world and if you couldn’t learn to tell a good rat from a bad one, you’d soon be living with both in your house” (338). The younger generations side with Anatole, who had been their teacher. Ultimately, the vote approves Leah, but no one is truly happy about it. Tata Kuvudundu is outspokenly against it, declaring that the animals will watch what they do and that no one will sleep that night.

When they return home, Reverend Price demands to know who is the master of their house. Leah startles everyone by yelling that he is. He tells her that the vote may be important to the village, but not to her because God has ordered that she submit to his will as the master of their house, and he declares that she cannot hunt. Leah asks if he is agreeing with the chief and the witchdoctor. He asserts it is them who agree with him; she is forbidden to go. Leah takes her bow and announces that she will hunt regardless of his opinion. Reverend Price is furious and takes off his belt to beat Leah with it, but she disappears into the jungle. Since he cannot find her, he beats the trees, pretending that was his plan. The remaining women of the family barricade the door to the children’s room and arm themselves with kitchen knives.

The villagers are unsettled by Tata Kuvudundu’s words and kill their animals, believing that they are watching them. No one in Kilanga gets any sleep, as the witchdoctor predicted. Nelson says that someone put an “evil sign” outside of Anatole’s house to curse him. In the morning, he narrowly escapes being bitten by a green mamba snake next to his cot. The villagers prepare for the hunt, but they are frightened about Anatole’s near miss and hope nothing will happen to them.

Adah explains the Bantu philosophy of the self:

People are bantu; the singular is muntu. Muntu does not mean exactly the same as person, though, because it describes a living person, a dead one, or someone not yet born. Muntu persists through all those conditions unchanged. The Bantu speak of ‘self’ as a vision residing inside, peering out through the eyeholes of the body, waiting for whatever happens next. Using the body as a mask, muntu watches and waits without fear, because muntu itself cannot die. The Transition from spirit to body and back to spirit again is merely a venture. It is a ride on the power of nommo, the force of a name to call oneself. Nommo rains from a cloud, rises in the vapor from a human mouth: a song, a scream, a prayer (343).

She takes comfort in knowing that, unlike in America, she is able to be her true self in the Congo, a combination of her disabled body and “overstrong will.” Adah also describes the hunt in detail. By watching dozens of animals die, she realizes that animals kill to survive, and humans are not exempt from this law of nature.

Leah kills a yearling impala on the hunt, but Tata Ndu’s eldest son, Gbenye, tries to claim it as his own kill. He asks how a “woman’s arrow” could possibly kill the impala. Nelson points out that the arrow which went through the animal’s neck was Leah’s and that this was the injury which killed it. Nelson taunts Gbenye by asking where his aim was, calling him nkento. Instead of killing Nelson, Gbenye points at Leah, shakes with irritation, and orders her to skin the impala and bring the meat to the village. Leah is torn, feeling “mixed up, grateful, and sick at heart” because Nelson’s choice of insult towards Gbenye means “woman” (349).

Rachel is horrified by the hunt. She hates the ash and soot that gets all over her and is disgusted by the innocent animals being flushed out of the jungle with the fire and killed. She vomits when she sees Leah and Nelson skinning the impala, which reminds her of the dog they had in Georgia. Rachel quickly goes home, burns her clothes, and takes a scalding hot bath, crying. She vows that she would not eat a single one of the animals hunted that day and laments her life’s circumstances, wishing to be provided for by a well-clothed, caring person who buys meat from the grocery store “like the Good Lord intended” (351). She comes to the same conclusion as Adah about humans being animals, but the tone of her discovery is more pitiful than educational, calling them all “poor dumb animals running for their lives” (351).

Leah recounts the aftermath of the hunt, referring to it as “the most terrible day of our lives” (352). After the hunt, there was supposed to be a celebration, but fighting erupts instead. Leah’s argument with Gbenye over the impala she has killed expands into a fight between those who voted for her and those who voted against her.

Tata Ndu throws her the hindquarter of her impala when the entire animal should be hers by right. Leah knows she should accept the insult, but she throws it at Gbenye’s gloating back. Tata Ndu is angry, saying that “Tata Price [referring to Leah, not the reverend] has refused his family’s share of meat” (353). He then turns to Anatole and calls him “the orphan without descendants” (353), which is the worst possible insult for a Congolese man and tells him the hindquarter will be enough for him. Anatole then drags away one of the large bushbucks he had shot, but Tata Boanda tries to claim the bushbuck for himself. From there, chaos descends as every adult tries to grab meat. Tata Kuvudundu repeats his prophecy that the animals were rising up against them, which everyone hears and believes: “The dead beasts in our hands seemed to be cursing and mocking us for having killed them. In the end we all crept home with our meat, feeling hunted ourselves.” (354).

When the rest of the family returns from the hunt, Rachel intends to announce that she will be a vegetarian and she’ll have Mr. Axelroot fly her back to America. Instead, she hears about the fallout after the hunt. Leah says they should have gotten the whole impala that she shot, but Reverend Price blames her for going against his wishes and washes his hands of her “moral education,” stating that she is a lost cause that he will no longer even bother to punish.

Nelson returns, terrified that he has seen the “evil sign,” a shadow forming an X, outside the chicken shed, and he refuses to sleep there. He cries to be let in the house, but Reverend Price blames the situation on foolish idol worship and says that if Orleanna means to cater to it, she can take her children and throw herself on the mercy of idol worshippers. Leah, Adah, Rachel, and Ruth May decide to help Nelson. Following the story of Bel and the Serpent, they sneak out through the window and put ash all around the chicken house so that if anyone enters it, they will see the tracks in the morning. Meanwhile, Nelson goes to stay with Anatole for the night.

In the morning, Leah, Adah, Rachel, Ruth May, and Nelson go to the chicken house. They see footprints in the ashes with six toes on one foot, indicating that Tata Kuvudundu has been there. Inside is a basket with a green mamba in it. Nelson prods it with a pole, it lashes out, then slithers away.

Ruth May screams, and Leah tries to comfort her, saying that the snake is gone. Ruth May does not respond as her face turns blue. Nelson tears her dress and reveals two fang marks on her shoulder. She has been bitten by the green mamba. Nelson orders them to get milk to draw out the poison and fetch Mama Nguza, who had once saved her son from a green mamba, but Leah is paralyzed by shock.

Adah quotes Emily Dickenson’s poem about death (“Because I could not stop for Death”), and describes Ruth May’s death as the symmetrical end of her life, paralleling her birth: “The closing parenthesis, at the end of the palindrome that was Ruth May” (365).

Rachel describes the shock of her younger sister’s death and the horror of knowing that it cannot be undone. Like the others, she is paralyzed in the moments immediately following it. She considers the irrational belief which they all shared, that if no one goes to tell their parents she is dead, everything would stay the way it was; “That if none of us confessed it, we could hold back the curse that was going to be our history” (367). Rachel realizes that there is no going back from this moment, and that there will be no way for her to go back to the person she had been before and the life she had once had in Georgia and pretend that none of this had happened. Her life has been forever changed.

After learning of her youngest child’s death, Orleanna calmly makes a shroud out of the mosquito netting and washes Ruth May’s body. Reverend Price only says that it “can’t be” and observes that Ruth May had not been baptized. Previously, he claimed that Ruth May was too young to make the decision, but Leah believes that he had waited for the sake of pageantry: he intended to baptize her on the day when the village of Kilanga finally saw that he was right and allowed him to baptize all of their children. The neighbors come to observe the grieving rites, shrieking and wailing as they did for their own children. Leah realizes that they have all experienced this pain and that it was no less real to them than it is to her. Orleanna gives away all their possessions to their neighbors. There is a crack of thunder, followed by rain. The children all say “mah-deh-mey-I,” remembering when Ruth May had taught them to play “Mother, May I” (375). Reverend Price “baptizes” all the present children, who have no awareness of what he is doing, and therefore do not respond when he asks them to “walk forward into the light” (375).