My role in our literature circle group is the "psycholigical critic". This is where I analyze the psycholigical motives or force that drives the charachter to a certain action. I guess in a sense I'm also a charachter analyst, but this seems to be a much more specific topic. In good literature, all actions have a purpose and a motivation. This is my earnest attempt to try to understand both subjects.
I don't quite understand the daughters' motives in the broad spectrum of the book, yet. There at least seems to be a motive behind all of Leah's actions, which are to move up in her father's good book, and be daddy's little girl. That stuff is basic. Ruth May seems to young to have any motive for her actions, except to do believe what other people tell her. Conversely from Leah, Rachel is the last one to give a damn about anything they're doing in the Congo. Adah is the most complex of them all, and I don't have the slightest idea of what she's up to.
I will start with Orleanna Price, the mother of the Price girls and wife of Nathan Price. Her narration is past-tense for the most part, and is the voice of a guilt ridden soul, seeking retribution; she "want[s] you to find [her] innocent" (8). Innocent of what? Did she commit a terrible crime? No because she'll "insist [she] was only a captive witness. What is the conqueror's wife, if not a conquest herself?" (9). Althought the metaphor of a conqueror's wife seems to hit Orleanna on the personal level, Kingsolver is trying to imply that there are many people who benefit from a crime, but are unwilling to cut their ties with the perpetrator. (I guess kind of like the United States and the Middle East right now if you want to look at it that way. I won't give away the exact historical tidbit that the novel writes about, but I'm sure you can make your own guesses. Without knowledge of the historical background of the situation, you won't really understand some of the foreshadowing Kingsolver is throwing in though).
From the very beginning, Orleanna's own motives tell us what the rest of the book is going to be about. Are her motives the same as the rest of the Price girls? Probably not, then we wouldn't need five different points of view as opposed to a singular one. However, we know something terrible must have happened, and while "some of us know how we came by our fortune, and some of us don't…, [but] there's only one question worth asking now: how do we aim to live with it?" (9). Her story is not only one of redemption, but of living with an "awful story off [her] shoulders" (10), and the pain of guilt.
After Orleanna's chapter of narration comes the rest of the Price girls (not Spice Girls): Leah, Ruth May, Rachel, and Adah. Right now however, I am much more interested in their father's motives, Nathan Price. What is his desire to make this pilgrimage to the Congo? What role does he play in the overall theme of guilt? Unfortunately, we will not be able to understand Nathan's personal motives until we read later on in the book, or research historically the role of missionaries in African in 1960, but we can still keep a couple questions in our minds for future reference.
At this point, we can still analyze Kingsolver's motives for not giving Nathan his own narration chapters to chime in and contribute to the theme of guilt. But unlike Orleanna, he is not the conqueror's wife, and is probably referred to the conqueror himself with his bible beating evangelistic ways (personally I don't like Nathan because he seems even more hillbilly than the other charachters). What is to be conquered is yet to be revealed, but he probably takes a more active role in the crime to be comitted and is likely to be the catalyst of events.
We do however get a hint at the very beginning of the novel with the quote from the book of Genesis. After reading first book, Genesis, this quote takes on a new meaning, apart from the biblical meaning. Nathan's mission is to "subdue [the] [earth]; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth" (3). I haven't read the rest of the book and am theorizing of course, but this is possibly his general motive and reason for coming to Africa. From now on I'd better pay more attention to the quote at the beginning of each book huh?
No comments:
Post a Comment