Analysis
With 's revelation regarding 's history, we see the private life of the Prices crossing once again with some of the great and brutal tragedies of the century. This time the tragedy in question, the Bataan Death March, is suffered by the United States rather than perpetrated by them. Ten hours after Pearl Harbor was bombed, Japanese bombers destroyed the U.S. fleet in Manila. General MacArthur, the U.S. Pacific commander, withdrew his troops from Luzon, where Nathan was injured, and into the mountains of the Bataan peninsula. There the troops continued to retreat, pursued by Japanese naval and infantry forces. Though literally starving, the troops held out until April 3, 1942, when they were forced to surrender. The survivors, emaciated and half- crazed with exhaustion, were then driven sixty-five miles on foot for three days, with their final destination being a prison camp. This trip, from the Bataan peninsula to the prison camp, is known as the "Bataan Death March" because roughly 15,000 of the prisoners perished en route, unable to withstand the thirst, starvation, blinding heat, and the abuse of the Japanese soldiers who whipped, beat, and shot at anyone who stumbled.
Kingsolver's main intention in invoking the Bataan Death March is to account for Nathan's extreme personality, though, presumably, a personality would have to be somewhat extreme to begin with to respond to these events as Nathan does. However, the interweaving of the Bataan Death March into the Price family's saga has further effects than simply making Nathan more believable. The presence of this tragedy in the story serves to heighten the already considerable sense of injustice and brutality that hangs over the narrative, deepening and widening our collective guilt to include more events and more segments of the world population. Until this point, it has only been Western powers that have been shown as responsible for brutality, oppression, and inhuman acts, but here we see an Eastern power partaking in this legacy of cruelty as well. The "heart of darkness" born of greed and arrogance is not limited to the West, but can and does infect all parts of humanity. It is, we might surmise, hearkening back to Nathan's symbolic garden, the real original sin of human beings.
Turning back to the exploration of Nathan's history and development, Orleanna's latest narrative not only sheds light on her husband's general religious fervor, but more specifically on his treatment of his family. In particular, it comes to seem likely that Nathan's most recent actions are not simply the result of a staggering neglect towards his wife and daughters, but that, at least in part, they are motivated by an active desire to abuse and hurt these women.
Nathan believes that God is constantly watching him, and that he must never deviate from the path that God has set out for him. He includes sexual lust among the deviations that he is to avoid, and yet he cannot help but succumb to his desires periodically. Nathan is enraged by his own sexual urges. Instead of turning his rage on himself, however, he conveniently turns his rage on his beautiful wife for tempting him, and on his daughters for being the physical manifestations of his lapses in will power. In a sense, it seems, he hates these women, resenting them for reminding him that he is not what he wants to believe himself. An active hatred would help explain not only his present endangerment of their lives, but also the constant pattern of physical and emotional abuse, as well as the complete and utter lack of tenderness.
Leah is hit harder than anyone, because all her values are changing. Can read whole book as mainly about Leah's coming of age—loss of one kind of faith and replacement by another. "It's still frightening when things you love appear suddenly changed from what you have always known." "If his decision to keep us here…wasn't right, then what else might he be wrong about? It has opened up in my heart a sickening world of doubts and possibilities, where before I had only faith in my father and love for the Lord. Without that rock of certainty underfoot, the Congo is a fearsome place to have to sink or swim."
The Judges, continued
Brother Fowles's Visit until Murder Plot Revealed
Summary
Rachel
arrives in the village along with his Congolese wife and their children. The entire village is in an excited uproar over his visit, and the Price women are no exception. Brother Fowles clearly has a deep understanding of and appreciation for the native customs, and tries to explain to that her neighbors are very religious people, with a keen sensitivity for the miracles of God's natural world. Orleanna, a former nature worshipper herself, is drawn to Brother Fowles and listens with an extremely sympathetic ear to his pantheistic interpretation of Christianity. Nathan then arrives at home, and the reception he gives Brother Fowles is cool at best. The situation degenerates when Brother Fowles's expresses feelings of fellowship for all the natives of Kilanga including Nathan's archenemy, . The two men enter into a war of biblical translation, in which Brother Fowles calmly gets the better of Nathan. Nathan storms off, and the Price women trail longingly after the departing Fowles.
Adah
A drought in the region is leading to famine, and Ruth May's condition is steadily worsening. Tata Ndu begins to visit daily, bearing gifts, and Nelson must be the one to explain the purpose of his visits. He wants to make Rachel his newest wife.
Leah
To turn down Tata Ndu's marriage proposal would be hugely offensive, not only to him personally but to the entire village. In place of the majority rule of democracy, the Congolese believe that complete unanimity must be reached before a plan can move forward and so any official action Tata Ndu takes must have the viallge's unanimous backing. Rachel is beside herself with outrage and fear.
As Ruth May gets sicker, they decide to move her bed into the main room so that Orleanna can keep an eye on her during the day. When they move the bed away from the wall, they discover every single one of her quinine tablets pressed against the cement. They realize that Ruth May had never swallowed any of her tablets, and that she has malaria.
Rachel
To avert any conflict with Tata Ndu the Prices decide to pretend that Rachel is already engaged to . Rachel and Eeben have to sit out on the Price's porch to demonstrate their connection to the village, and the two of them begin to strike up a strained acquaintanceship. Eeben confides that he works for the CIA, but Rachel does not believe him. She begins to concoct a secret plan to win him over and convince him to fly her mother and sister home.
Ruth May
Ruth May believes that she became sick because of all the bad things she has done, like seeing Axelroot's diamonds. She thinks about the amulet that Nelson gave to her, and decides that when she reappears it will be as a mamba snake. It is clear that she chooses this "safe place" because mamba snakes are what frighten her most.
Rachel
Rachel turns seventeen, and is outraged that no one makes a fuss over her birthday. Orleanna gives Rachel a pair of her own earrings but then must return to care for Ruth May whose fever has shot up to a hundred and five. In addition, Adah is stung by a scorpion and Rachel is convinced that her sisters are purposefully trying to steal the attention away from her.
Adah
Ruth May recovers, but remains listless and uninspired. Orleanna likes to avoid the house as much as possible and takes the girls on long nature walks every day, culminating in a picnic. Leah teaches arithmetic in Anatole's school in the mornings, and then learns French and Kikongo from him in the afternoons. She is also learning to use a bow and arrow from Nelson, and is showing a real talent for the sport. Nathan alone remains completely unchanged, obtusely ranting that "Tata Jesus is bangala," which, as Adah points out, can either mean "Jesus is precious" or, if you say it too quickly as Nathan does, "Jesus is a poisonwood tree."
Leah
As Leah spends the afternoons reading with Anatole she often interrupts him to pose various questions. They become involved in another long discussion about race, politics, and justice. Leah tries to explain to him what the United States is like—with its abundance and large cities—and Anatole does not quite believe her. She then asks why he translates her father's sermons if he does not believe that the Reverend's goals are good ones, and he explains that he wants the other villagers to have the chance to make their own decisions.
Rachel
The day after her birthday Rachel and Axelroot go for a walk in the jungle. They kiss, and he then confides a secret in her: Patrice Lumumba is going to be killed. Again, she does not believe him, certain that he is just trying to impress her with his importance so that he can continue kissing her.
Adah
Adah continues to spy on Eeben Axelroot. She sees him speaking code into his radio, and one day a man called "W.I. Rogue" joins him in his cabin. They talk about Patrice Lumumba being "as good as dead," and link the assassination plot to President Eisenhower. Adah is distraught over this revelation, finding it hard to believe that the United States is orchestrating a coup that will overthrow the elected government and murder an innocent man.
Analysis
plays and important symbolic role the story, representing the positive side of Christianity in contrast to 's negative. Through his compassion and humility, Brother Fowles is actually able to effect change in the village of Kilanga, for instance in preaching the important of kindness towards one's wife. It is particularly significant that Brother Fowles's great triumph in Kilanga is in championing the cause of women, and protecting them from the heretofore accepted abuse of their husbands. We are told that during Brother Fowles's tenure in Kilanaga, private shrines to Tata Jesus sprung up in all of the kitchens, domain of the woman. Brother Fowles's protectiveness towards women sets him up in direct contrast to Nathan, who is a misogynist and wife-abuser himself. The contrast between Brother Fowles and Nathan is further underscored by their widely differing attitudes toward the natural world. Nathan, a farmer by training, hacks at the land, trying to subdue it into submission. He views nature as something to be manipulated. Brother Fowles, on the other hand, borders on the pagan in his worship of untamed nature.
The worship of nature actually seems to occupy and important place in Kingsolver's notion of "good spirituality." Brother Fowles, as was just mentioned, is a nature worshipper. Orleanna worshipped nature as a girl, and, as we will see, later returns to this state of mind. Both and will express pantheistic sentiments later in the book as well, professing that God is all of nature. In many ways, pantheism is the perfect antidote to the "original sin" of greed and hubris evinced by Nathan, Belgian colonialists, and the United States government. To worship nature as divine it to admit that our role on earth is not to subdue what surrounds us, nor to ring from it all that we can, but to appreciate and understand it.
Brother Fowles's visit comes at a crucial time in the Price women's emotional life. They are losing faith in their old authority figures, in Nathan, God and even the President of the United States. It is Adah who utters the words, "The smiling bald man with the grandfather face has another face," when she discovers that Eisenhower is behind the plot to assassinate , but it could just as easily have been Orleanna, or Leah, or even Ruth May who uttered this sentence, and it could just as easily have been Nathan or their traditional image of God whose surface face they suddenly saw as a sham. As their faith in these father figures is undermined, their faith in the principles espoused by these men is undermined as well. In Leah's case, it is the principles that are undermined first, and the men that fall as a result. Brother Fowles's visit provides them with an alternative vision to believe in, a truth of compassion and understanding. Ultimately, Adah, Orleanna, and Leah will all follow Brother Fowles's example, living their own versions of that sort of truth.
The Judges,continued
The Ants
Summary
Leah
An invasion of flesh-eating driver ants takes over the village covering everything in sight, and the entire population escapes toward the river. Leah runs mindlessly for a while, trying to ignore the sting of the ants crawling all over her body, before realizing that she has lost track of her family. Suddenly Anatole appears beside her, and tells her to remain where she is while he finds everyone else.
Rachel
Rachel's only thoughts during the ant crisis are for herself. She attempts to force her way onto one of their neighbor's boats, and is shoved off. When she is flung to the ground she loses her most prized possession, the one object she thought to take with her as they fled the house, her mirror. She stares in horror at the shards lying on the ground.
Ruth May
Orleanna grabs Ruth May and begins running with her, but then hands her off to someone else. Ruth May begins to cry and then remembers the amulet that Nelson gave to her. She tries to think hard about being a mamba snake.
Adah
Adah, unable to run through the crowd along with everyone else, pleads helplessly for her mother to save her. Orleanna is torn between saving Ruth May and saving Adah. Unable to put Ruth May down, she calls to Adah to do her best to follow along. Adah feels betrayed and abandoned. She falls to the ground and is about to be trampled when Anatole lifts her up and carries her to the river, where a boat is waiting to carry them across.
Leah
Anatole appears again with Ruth May over his shoulder and climbs into a boat with Leah. He tells her that Adah and her mother are in another boat and that her father is delivering a sermon about the ten plagues of Egypt. Leah and Anatole continue their ongoing philosophical discussion, with Leah revealing Adah's discovery about Eisenhower's plot against Lumumba. Leah reaches a crisis of faith amid the turmoil, feeling the "breath of God go cold on [her] skin." She begins to cry and repeat Anatole's name over and over feeling that this word alone can anchor her. Suddenly she sputters out that she loves him, and he tells her never to repeat that. Two days later, after the ants have passed through, they are able to return to Kilanga.
Analysis
The episode with the ants serves to bring out elements of each character's personality that until now had been carefully suppressed, hidden both from other people and from the character herself. The extremity of the situation—the terror of fleeing for one's life—pares away the layers of self-deception. By bringing each character, or at least, and , to crisis level, this scene serves as something of a climax, even though the major event of the story is yet to come.
's exposure is not very surprising. It is only a confirmation of what we have been led to believe about her until now, that is, that she is a true egomaniac. During the crisis she is shown to be a "demon," in 's words, trampling ruthlessly over other people to save her own skin.
reaches her final crisis of faith here, losing her old religion and immediately picking up its replacement in the form of her love for Anatole. She feels "the breath of God go cold on [her] skin" (The Judges, Leah) and then a few paragraphs later murmurs Anatole's name feeling that it "took the place of prayer" (The Judges, Leah). Though it is Anatole who goads her here into admitting that life is not an equation with deeds on one side and reward and punishment on the other, his last small pushes are really superfluous. Leah's crisis has been building steadily, egged on by her observations in Kingala and Leopoldville and by her eye-opening philosophical discussion with Anatole. The latest blow she had been grappling with until this point had been Adah's discovery that Eisenhower sent orders to kill . This news disrupted her sense of country, determining, unbeknownst to her, that she would never call that place home again. However, it takes the mortal tumult caused by the driver ants to finally sever her desperate ties to a belief in a just and comforting God. Convinced that they are all about to die, she no longer has the will to force herself to believe in something she has probably not truly believed in for many months.
too suffers a crisis of faith, but the faith she loses is in her own detachment from life. She learns that she values her own life, that she is desperate to continue living. Adah's loss is actually quite similar to Leah's, but even more harrowing. Both of them lose their buffer against the harsh reality of the world. Leah hid from the injustices of life behind her belief in a just and caring God, a belief that good deeds are rewarded and bad ones punished. Adah, on the other hand, looked life's injustice fully in the face, but she tried to keep the pain of injustice at bay by pretending that she was a mere observer rather than an active participant. In particular, the injustice she had been dealt because of her injury, and the resulting exclusion she suffered convinced that the world would exile her, she made that impossible by exiling herself from the world. What Leah loses is merely a source of external comfort, a source that had been steadily waning for months. Adah loses something much deeper—her entire sense of self, her way of approaching the world, and she loses it in a single instant. She refers to this instant as the turning point in her life, the moment when she ceased her upward journey toward maturation, and began her downward journey toward death. Whereas Leah has a new faith, her love for Anatole, waiting to rush in and fill the gap left by the old, Adah has no such thing. It is not until much later that she finds her own comfort in science. Adah's crisis is more devastating than Leah's for these reasons, and also for one more, perhaps the most significant of all. In the very moment that Adah loses her buffer against the pain of injustice, she suffers its severest blow: her mother chooses to save her sister's life instead of hers.
On more thing is worth noting with regard to the driver ants. Whereas the Price women see this event in a wholly negative light, their neighbors in Kilanga are used to the biennial visit, and view it in a positive light, as a form of cleansing. When the ants pass through the village they eat all plant and animal matter left in their wake, which means that they clean the houses of crumbs, the beds of bugs, the hen coops of chicken mites and so on. It also means that any baby or pet that is left behind will be eaten alive, but the Congolese know this and act accordingly. This is just one more reminder that the Congolese are well adapted to their land, and that the civilization that grew up there was the correct civilization for that location. On the flip side, this means that the Western civilization that so many centuries worth of conquerors tried to impose on African soil was misplaced and just plain wrong. A culture that is right in some contexts can be ill suited to others.
