Essay #1

Exile is a place of realization that you have been tossed from your comfort zone and into a whole new realm of the world. You have been cut you off from the normal life you are used to. Characters in The Poisonwood Bible are developed as independent, curious, sassy, carefree, selfish and ignorant. The daughters in the Price family are playful and young, each with their own personality. Leah is discovered to be a little bit of an oddity. While all the other girls are inside, washing, cleaning, working with mom, she is outside getting her hands dirty in the African soil with her dad. She is a little disciple to Mr. Price, soaking up whatever biblical or worldly advice he can offer her.  Whatever he is doing, she is somewhere near watching, helping or learning. As the family’s missionary endeavors continue, it becomes apparent that to Leah that her continual attempts to impress and please her father are going nowhere. She is upset when she finds all she has done and all the love she has grown to have for her father means nothing to him. He gets lost in his own mind and aspirations as hers are crushed and throw in the reddish dirt of the African land. Her purpose in life is lost without having father there. Leah becomes aware of a lonely place she is in, where her father, who she has followed, loved and admired, begins to lose himself, and she is forced to find herself.

The feeling of abandonment and loss of connection to a loved one, especially as a child, can leave them with little to replace the loss with. Leah allowed her dad to become such an integral part of her life, losing him is analogous to a teenager losing their cellphone. She loses her counselor as well as a parent. She is swept into a sea of disarray and her father, the buoy that was keeping her afloat, turns into an anchor that is sinking towards the ocean floor, threatening to pull her down. She is forced to keep herself afloat and find her way in the complicated ocean that is her life. Her father descends closer and closer to the ocean floor and she realizes she doesn’t have anyone to call for help. Leah is in a place where she is gurgling, working to keep herself afloat; the water threatening to fill her lungs. She is forced to persevere and latch onto something that can help pull her to the surface.

While losing one very important asset to her life, she has a void which she is then able to fill another, possibly more valuable one. This asset is one that not only brings her to the surface and to its abundance of air, but also to a boat, towel and warm hug. Anatole, though first at odds with her father over religious matters, becomes important to Leah. He offers her valuable opportunities at the school teaching and spending time together. Her new male figure in her life is able to love her in a different way than her father was. A father is forced to tolerate all the things that come with having children, where Anatole is coming from a place of true care and love. Anatole spends time with her, sitting and talking about their common interests. He is a listener and is the one to keep her company when she had nothing to do and to stay with her when she was deathly sick with malaria. Leah is able to gain much more love, attention, and security by having Anatole by her side than she would have had with her father. Her father was not the enemy but through losing him, she was able to gain something much more worthwhile.

Leah’s experience adds an element of positivism to the whole book. Though the reader is first puzzled by the father’s actions that eventually drove away his daughter, his actions are offset by the happiness of Leah finding Anatole as the new man in her life. Without Leah and Anatole’s happy ending, the book might have been left a dreary end for all four women. The end is puzzling but encourages each person to continue moving on with their life, trying to make the best out of the situation they have landed in. The characters all face their own personal exiles and their decisions made during that time showed their attempts to cope with it. Some characters attempts failed, and others were more successful. Trying to escape the lonely exile is more important than not attempting because of the fear of failure.