Essay #1

"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." One of the most devastating situations that no one wants imagine is dealing with exile. Not only is being casted out of the environment you are in and placed somewhere absolutely different sounds terrifying, but also adapting into a different lifestyle. However, like everything, there is always the good in the situation. This transaction could be a great opportunity on beginning a fresh life. In the novel, The Poisonwoods Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, a missionary family, led by the father, Nathan Price, arrives in Congo, leaving their friends and family back in the United States. Although everyone in the family is put in the exile position, Adah, one of the twin daughters of Nathan Price, stood out the most. Although Adah had to overcome the many obstacles, her experience with exile brought both alienation and enrichment.

Unlike everyone else in the Price family, Adah was incapable of doing the many things what they did because of the fact that she is crippled and the whole left side of her body paralyzed from birth. Her life, compared to her twin sister, was totally opposition. While her twin sister, Leah, threw herself into life and became a participant, Adah held back and stayed quiet. At this point, she counted herself different and being effortless in trying what everyone else was capable of doing. Suffering from the distressful life in Congo, Adah runs into an event in the story that basically changes her life. She is almost trampled to death during the plague of ants, however, she does everything she can to stay alive. From this point, she finds herself actually caring for her life, once thinking it was worthless. After the tragic death of her little sister, Ruth May, her mother, Orleanna, decides to flee from Congo back to the United States. When she arrives back in the United States, she dedicates her life to science and becomes a doctor. She also discovers that she doesn't have to limp.

Mentally and physically, Adah overcame the hardships in her life. Starting with her disability in her body, which lower her self-esteem and worsen by the fact that no one really supported her, and to her distressful life in Congo. However, without these hardships, her life wouldn’t be the same and most likely will be the same as she was since the beginning of the novel.