ESSAY #1

The idea of complete isolation from all that you’ve known initially sounds strange and terrifying. However, how often are people given the opportunity to start over, learn and adapt to a new way of life, and form individual opinions. Leah Price, from The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, deals with exile and comes away a changed woman. Exile brings about alienation and fear, but through these struggles can come enlightenment.

Leah left her comfortable American home and ventured with her family to a remote African village. She immediately was hit hard by culture shock. One loss after another came from this African experience due to the Price family’s inability to successfully adapt to this foreign environment. Leah’s solid faith in her father, a factor that played into her every action, slowly faded. Customs and values weren’t as they were in their hometown in Georgia, here the people didn’t accept her father with open arms. Time after time he passionately harsh sermons were ignored, causing Leah to question her father’s perfection. Eventually Leah lost all faith in her once flawless father. God and her father were so closely intertwined in her mind that when faith in her father disappeared, her faith in God crumbled as well. This isolation from her once ignorantly blissful life was one big loss of innocence for Leah. Through all the injustices she witnessed her childish acceptance that “life is fair” was gone.

Although Leah’s ignorantly blissful life was over a new women rose from the ashes. An enlightened women who understood two diverse cultures and who was inspired to serve justice. In her isolation, she had time to look, listen, and observe, like a wallflower amongst her bustling village. Leah saw the scheming of an assassination, mothers mourning lost children, and hundreds of hard workers going hungry. Without exile Leah wouldn’t have had the opportunity to observe these and wouldn’t have reached her eventual enlightened state.

Leah Price’s loss of innocence and gain of enlightenment evoke the theme of world injustice. Leah’s is just one story of the ups and downs to exile. All in all, despite exile’s connotation with punishment, it has the potential to be rewarding experience.