The Poisonwood Bible: Irony 6 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.

With a simile, Orleanna compares Nathan's naïve faith to keeping receipts. The simple process of paying for something, keeping the receipt, and getting reimbursed for the purchase later by an authority figure makes more sense in the United States than it does in the Congo, where they are no receipts and, it seems, no reimbursements. Unlike Nathan, Orleanna doubts that their lives are inherently safe because they are on a mission to spread Christianity.

There is also irony in double meaning of "Nzolo," since it can either mean something holy or something humorously and unintentionally gross. Orleanna expands this ironic misunderstanding to show the reader her wavering faith in God. She says she understands the Father of Fish Bait, a vengeful God who would metaphorically "just as soon dangle us from a hook." She also understands a kind and conventional Jesus who is Father in Heaven. But she cannot imagine them metaphorically "living in the same house," as in, being part of the same divinity, which is how Protestants understand God and Jesus.

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.

By setting up an election for Jesus, Tata Ndu points out the conflict between Christianity and democracy, which are both ideologies brought from more developed Western nations to Africa. A simile compares Ndu's careful pronouncement of his English words to the precise placement of stones. This simile suggests Ndu's words have weight, like rocks, and that he handles them exactly and mindfully. He wants his message completely understood.

When Tata Ndu tells Nathan that "You say these things are good," he speaks both to Nathan as an evangelical, who has insisted that civilized people are Christians with democracies, and to foreigners who hope to "civilize" Africa in general. The election on Jesus generates situational irony because, despite insisting both Christianity and democracy are good, Nathan also insists they cannot be combined in this way. He also can't offer a coherent reason as to why they cannot be combined. Tata Ndu undermines Western imperial ideology by taking its arguments to their logical extreme, a process that leads to the democratic village-wide rejection of Christianity. Tata Ndu works within the Western framework he's been presented, but in doing so, he makes that same framework seem arbitrary and half-baked.

It's worth mentioning that Christianity and democracy have both coexisted and clashed over Western history. A more thoughtful or patient evangelist than Nathan might have been able to explain why voting on Jesus is a bad idea. But what Ndu rejects here is not necessarily democracy or even Christianity. Instead, he rejects Nathan's self-righteousness and conviction that Americans are more intelligent, civilized, and logical than the Congolese villagers.

After Leah's knowledgeable explanation of the difficulties the Congolese faced in running their own government, including the steps world powers like America took to undermine Congolese self-determination, Rachel's claims carry dramatic irony. She says she "received quite an education about politics," but the opposite turns out to be true (or at least her education is heavily biased toward the colonizers' viewpoint). She hyperbolically says there are "about a million miles of contemporaneous modern thinking" separating the French Congo (still controlled by a European country and, she thinks, superior) and the Republic of Congo. She criticizes the Congolese for self-determination and claims they've failed because of their own inherent inability and temperament. Rachel does not know or care that outside forces prevented legitimate democratic rule in Congo.