"Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home; its essential sadness can never be surmounted." This quote by Edward Said greatly explains the life of a women named Orleanna Price from "The Poisonwood Bible". Orleanna experienced exile with her many new homes and the breaks in between them when she married her husband Nathan, when she moved to the Congo and lastly when she dealt with the grief of her daughters passing.
Orleanna was a wild child who loved nature until she had to take on the persona of becoming the Baptists wife. She felt exiled especially when Nathan put all his lustful faults on her. Orleanna felt forced to tend to every one of her children, not until they were able to walk was she able to breath. She became a passive wife who was no longer the person she grew up to become, because her husband enabled her.
When Nathan moved his family to the Congo, Orleanna never felt so exiled in her entire life. As the girls birthdays arrived, Orleanna was crushed to find out the cake batter she brought from home was useless with the cooking technology of the Congo. She began to crumble, feeling as though she couldn't bring happiness to her children without her annual activities they grew up with. Orleanna was all alone, only able to keep herself together by caring for others.
The death of Ruth May was Orleanna's true exile breaking point. She had failed to keep her daughters safe and now she felt that God was no longer on her side. Orleanna not only lost her daughter, but her faith left with everything else.
"The Poisonwood Bible," by Barbara Kingsolver is a perfect reference for a person to truly understand exile. Orleanna wasn't just stripped from her actual home, but also the home from herself and the person she is.
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