The Poisonwood Bible: Allusions 7 key examples

The Prices are Evangelical Christians, and Nathan is a minister attempting to spread Christianity to Africa. As a result, there are many Biblical allusions and quotations throughout the novel. This specific allusion to the lilies of the field is from Matthew 6:28. Jesus says, as an example of how God will take care of His followers, "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin." The lilies do not strive or work, and yet they are better dressed than even a wealthy king.

Nathan's allusion is meant to encourage his family to leave behind their belongings, since God will provide for them. Rachel's response is ironic: she says that the lilies do need the Bibles and spade her father insists on taking. Leah suggests that Rachel misses the point of this verse, but in a way, Rachel is right. Nathan's condescending allusion applies only to his wife and daughters—he does not follow his own advice to leave behind unwieldy belongings.

Before this moment, Ruth May alludes to the myth of Ham from the Bible, which was a common justification for slavery and Jim Crow laws (legalized racial segregation in the United States). As she explains, some Christians understood dark skin as a curse from God, meted out to punish Ham and his ancestors and to forever mark them as inferior to others. The original story of the curse of Ham appears in Genesis 9:20-27.

The "Jimmy Crow" that Ruth May mentions is not a real person but instead her childish misunderstanding of segregation laws. These laws were not created by a man named Jimmy Crow but were instead called Jim Crow laws because "Jim Crow" was a derogatory and racially charged term for Black Americans. Jim Crow laws, which were introduced after Reconstruction (the period immediately following the Civil War) and remained in place until 1965, forbade Black Americans from white-only spaces and heavily policed their behavior. These laws existed mainly in the American South, and they kept Black people from entering many schools, churches, train cars, restaurants, and stores.

Another justification for Jim Crow laws was that they protected white women, which adds a significance to Ruth May's assertion that Black people have their own schools "so they won't be a-strutting into Rachel's and Leah and Adah's school." Ruth May claims that it's "in the Bible" that Black people can only go to the zoo on Thursday, but the reader knows this cannot be true, which makes Ruth May's claim ironic. It also illustrates that Ruth May believes, as a result of her childhood in the South, that anti-Black racism and segregation are condoned by God or required by Christianity. Christians both advocated for abolition and promoted slavery; some Christians sought to end segregation, while other Christians violently enforced it. Ruth May's understanding of segregation, delivered in her Southern dialect, demonstrates that the kind of Christianity Nathan preaches is often hypocritical and cruel, and perhaps takes for granted that Black people are inferior.

Obviously Nathan quotes from the Bible during his sermon, but in her narration, Rachel also alludes to a biblical story, although she gets the name of the mountain wrong. (It's Mount Sinai, although "Mount Syanide" evokes the poison cyanide and is therefore fitting for the poisonous rhetoric Nathan brings to Kilanga.) Rachel compares her father to Moses, but makes the comparison unfavorable by recasting the Ten Commandments (which Moses famously brought down from Mount Sinai) as "ten fresh ways to wreck your life." She also uses a simile to compare Nathan's voice to "a saw ripping into a tree trunk," which makes his preaching violent and harsh. Finally, note the use of italics to demonstrate Nathan's "rising singsong preaching voice." Evangelical preachers are famous for their vivid rhetoric and commanding voices, and Nathan seems to be no exception.

Adah uses a simile to compare the platter to the Virgin Mary at the time of Jesus's birth. Like the Virgin Mary, who gave birth in a barn surrounded by animals, the plate is "one amazing, beautiful thing" amid surroundings that the Prices find unpleasantly rustic. This is yet another of the biblical allusions that fill the novel. Adah describes the appearance of the plate with rich visual imagery, and it seems so delicate that it glows when sunlight passes through it. Her claim that "we might worship it" could be read as a joke. But it can also be taken somewhat literally because, at this point, the Price women do seem to crave beautiful objects and reminders of their American lives. The earlier comparison to the Virgin Mary also complicates the "worship" statement: the Prices, as Protestants, would likely disapprove of the Catholic ritual of praying to and venerating Mary. So in this paragraph, the plate becomes a semi-taboo idol of what they might few as a lesser religion.

Ruth May personifies her pet mongoose by describing it as if it chose her (rather than the other way around). She also gives the mongoose a human-like attitude: "It won't tolerate anybody else." When Leah suggests naming it "Ricky Ticky Tabby," she is alluding to the short story by Rudyard Kipling, in which a mongoose named Rikki-Tikki-Tavi protects an English family living in India from snakes. This story is also set in a colonial environment, but is uncritical of colonialism, unlike The Poisonwood Bible. Ruth May's mongoose name is less loaded: Stuart Little is a mouse from a children's book. Ruth May's Southern dialect is especially strong in this passage: she says things like "no sir," "a-calling," and "Mama lets it come on in the house," which indicate to reader her foreignness in the Congo.

Rachel alludes to American star Marilyn Monroe, who had recently appeared in the musical film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, in which she sings a jazz song titled "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend." This allusion sets up that Rachel's understanding of the world is heavily influenced by her time spent in the United States. She never considered that diamonds had to be mined until she meets Anatole, and when she learns this reality, she experiences cognitive dissonance. How can Marilyn Monroe's diamonds come from the Congo when the Congo is the opposite of glamor and wealth? Her Southern teenage dialect ("Father would flatout kill me," "Gee," "weebie jeebies") also illustrates her foreignness to the Congo, as well as her naïveté. Rachel's time in the Congo is reshaping everything she thought she understood, including diamonds.

Fowles not only quotes the Bible from memory but cites the book, approximate location ("a little farther on" from Romans 10), and translation he's pulled his quote from. This citational thoroughness lends legitimacy to his argument and illustrates to the reader and Nathan alike that Fowles knows the Bible inside and out. Fowles even quotes from Nathan's preferred Bible translation. Using all these markers of legitimacy, Fowles argues something that Nathan does not, and perhaps will never, agree with: that Africans deserve their respect and appreciation.

Fowles quotes a metaphor from Romans 11. First, the metaphor compares a part of a whole to a "handful of dough," then to the "root of a tree." The point made in the original biblical context is that all Israelites are holy as a result of God blessing Abraham and the other Jewish patriarchs. But the biblical author goes on to say that it is not only the Israelites, the original "branches" of the root, who are consecrated. A "grafted" branch (that is, a Christian who is not Hebrew) may also be holy, but only because of the blessedness of the root.

Fowles extrapolates this metaphor out to suggest that any "graft," or any stranger in a community, is supported by that community. Essentially, any benefits the graft enjoys are because of the root that provides those benefits, and the graft cannot forget this. Fowles compares Nathan and his family to the graft in order to suggest Nathan should have more respect and gratitude toward the Congolese villagers who have supported and welcomed the Prices.