“This is what it means to be a beast in the kingdom.” In
this quote from The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, Adah learns
something very important about not only being alienated from culture and
society, but being alienated from her own family. Leaving home left a scar on
all of their hearts, but Adah was already full of scars and self-deprecation. She
was the silent martyr who was always left behind and avoided. She was truly a
beast in the kingdom of men, dragging along her bitterness and silently hating
everyone for it. This made her the true beast in Africa, but Africa also
brought her release. Release from bitterness and blame that came in the form of
social acceptance of deformities she couldn’t find in America, and in the form
of a mother’s love. This is what the book was all about, accepting people as
they are and letting go of that malicious little voice that whispers people’s
fears and insecurities like a prayer.
Being a
beast in the kingdom not only alienated Adah from society, but from her family
too. She was so weighed down by her bitterness and hate that she dragged it
along behind her in the form of her false limp. Adah carried these feelings
with her to Africa and they only served to increase the alienation that the
exile enforced. In a family where beauty and strength was highly prevalent Adah
withered and died and learned to resent them. She was the deformed twin, the
girl who didn’t talk, the slowest one. These differences were pointed out to
her daily and as the exile alienated her family from Kilanga she alienated
herself even more from them. The incident with the ants was the last illusion
she had of love and acceptance, because when push came to shove her mother
chose Ruth May. This brought out all of her hidden insecurities and confirmed
them making her realize she really was the beast, the slow, skulking creature
creeping up on life like a thief in the night.
In a
way Adah’s deformities were her salvation. In Kilanga her hemiplegia was as acceptable
as a sixth toe, and as noticeable as a scar. They noticed her deformities and
accepted her for them. To the Kilanga people she was a girl with a bum leg who
had so much more to offer. This meant more to Adah than any of her family’s
acceptance ever could because it showed that she could exist by herself in a
society that didn’t judge her based on birth defects. This helped her to let go
of the bitterness she had toward Leah for being the perfect twin because
suddenly they were the white people in Kilanga. Leah was the feminist, Rachel
was the flea, and Adah was just the girl with a limp not a monster or freak of
nature. The Kilanga people believed life was supposed to leave marks and that
some were bigger than others, and this helped Adah to let go of the alienation.
Her mother picking her over Leah and Rachel also helped because it put to rest
all of her previous insecurities and made her realize she was worthy of love
and she could stop the martyrdom.
The book
was never about the death of Ruth May or the alienation Adah felt, it was about
so much more. It was about Adah letting go of her bitterness, and Leah stepping
out from her father’s shadow, and Rachel masking the pain with vanity and
snippy remarks. Adah’s alienation she felt as a beast in the kingdom parallels
the real message of the book which is to accept people as they are whether they
be crippled, vain, stubborn, or cruel. Her liberation from her deformity shows
that it is about letting go of fear and insecurity and finding it within oneself
to rise above the influence and poverty. It is about letting go of the past and
finding forgiveness in the deepest corners of the jungle where Ruth May lie in
wait, the Little Beast of Africa.
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