The term "home" is often defined as a place where one lives. However, in today's age, many would beg to differ and argue that home is not necessarily a material place of birth, but rather where one feels secure. Whether that be in a concrete house or a lover's arms is up for interpretation. In the The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, Leah Price is whisked from her birthplace in Georgia to travel on a mission with her family to a place foreign to them all: Africa. While at first Leah is excited for this new chapter in her life, and the opportunity to learn and explore, she quickly realizes that the African environment is not as comforting as was Sanderling Island, GA. That is until she meets someone who serves as somewhat of a substitute for her lack of a place to call home, a teacher in the village named Anatole. From her first encounters in Africa to starting a family with Anatole, Leah Price experiences both the positive and negative effects of exile and how it shapes her views on what "home" really is.
From the beginning of the novel, Leah is an optimistic young woman who is adventurous and open to new things, so she takes the "temporary" move to Africa surprisingly well in comparison with the rest of the family. Though Nathan Price is not necessarily an endearing father figure, he and Leah share the closest bond out of the four daughters. For a decent amount of time, Nathan is depicted as a representative of Leah's safe haven, a type of home for her while away from their hometown in Georgia. As the plot continues, however, Leah finds that her father is not as stable as he once was, which results in a break between the relationship of the two. With her birthplace being thousands of miles away with no look of a quick return, and her father further separating from the family, Leah experiences a lapse in character where she feels alone and isolated. With the language barrier with the natives and the lack of English-speaking people in the village, she watches her life pass by realizing that she no longer has a place or feeling of refuge in her life.
While in this seemingly inescapable rut, Leah loses motivation to further her knowledge and travels, and just life experiences in general. It is not until she meets Pascal, a young native that she is able to somewhat communicate with, that she realizes she is not as alone and isolated as she once felt. Through interactions with him, she is able to become more comfortable with the possibility that she may never return to where she once knew to be her home in America. This strikes a thought in her that maybe home might lie in people rather than places, as she had once felt comfort and security in being with her father, no matter the landscape. That thought is expanded upon when she becomes closer to Anatole, a village teacher.
When she first meets Anatole, she has no really pressing thoughts of him as anything more than a guy in the village. In closer encounters, however, she realizes that she may be keen on him as more than just someone who helps communicate with her family. In talking and studying with him, she finds out more about what is going on in Africa than she ever really knew about. She enjoys sitting with him and finally having someone to talk to and make pressing conversation with. Until Leah's mother and sisters leave the village to travel home, she and Anatole uphold a comforting friendship, to say the least. While traveling to the concrete place the girls once knew as home, Leah falls ill along with her family, who is fortunate enough to be rescued by Anatole and some of the villagers nearby. Because Leah's illness is the most extreme, she is not able to continue on with the others until she is healthy again. Anatole nurses her back to health, telling Leah how he will get her back to her family so she can return home. It is not until this point that Leah realizes that home is not in some house in Georgia, or with her family in Africa, but rather that home is whenever she is with Anatole. Though their relationship is frowned upon by both sides of the social spectrum, they agree that they will do what it takes to be together. Because of their desire for love and a place to call home, the two are able to marry and form a family, moving around and traveling all over to different places. This is relevant in that no matter where they travel in the world, they will always be home because they have each other.
All in all, Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible helps prove the statement that home is not necessarily a place or a thing or a person, but rather a feeling of safety and security. From beginning to end, Leah Price experiences what is the complete and utter exile from what she once knew to be home, not only in physical location, but in mental isolation. By discovering people rather than places that comforted her, she was able to find refuge no matter the severe circumstances of her living conditions. Through her journey and the underlying events of her life and travel, she comes to the realization that though Anatole is not a place nor is he family, he is what makes her happy. Thus, their relationship serves as an idea of security so as to give Leah the feeling of being at home when she is with him, no matter the difficulty of their lives or the issues that arise through their travel. Though the process of exile was rough on Leah, it ultimately led to her enlightenment of what home really is and how she was able to attain it.
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