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Plot Summary | Genre | General Vision or Viewpoint | Cultural Context | Themes and Issues
Plot Summary
The story is about the Price family who move in 1959 to the Congo. Nathan Price the father is a Baptist preacher. There are four girls called Adah, Leah, Rachael, and Ruth May .The story deals with the various characters and experiences which each member of the family have while they live in the Congo. The Congo is occupied by the Belgians and many of the Congolese are deprived of a proper education. Orleanna Price is the mother and she suffers a great deal in the story. Her youngest daughter Ruth May dies when she is very young after having been bitten by a snake.
There is a continuous parallel drawn between the various histories of each member of the family and the actual political events, which dominated the Congo in this time. The story deals with the Congo in the years between 1959 and 1986.After eighty years of colonial rule, the Congo celebrates liberation. A black leader is inaugurated in 1960, and the country reverts back to regaining control of its own territory.
Nathan begins to change after the war and becomes a tyrant and fanatical about religion. He begins to govern his household and the people under him in a tyrannical manner. Orleanna his wife submits to him, but many of his daughters assert their own independence and desire for freedom. Rachael is the first one to leave and she moves in with a black man called Axelroot who eventually abandons her for another woman. She marries several times and eventually inherits a large hotel called the Equatorial in a place called Brazzaville in the French Congo. She manages to organize and run this in a very efficient way for various businessmen. Rachael never marries again and remains there very happy in her job of hotel owner and manager.
Lumumba assumes control as President in the Congo. There is a coup organized to put Mobutu in charge of the entire army. Lumumba manages to escape but is recaptured and badly beaten. He dies shortly after this. Mobutu assumes control in 1961. The people begin to change with Independence and decide to vote in church about the question of whether Jesus Christ is a personal god .The Congolese are beginning to become used to the whole idea of the democratic process. Nathan Price is voted out of the church and the people rebel against him. Orleanna leaves with Adah and the father is left alone. He is later on attacked by the natives and burned. Leah is brought to a mission run by French nuns. Adah goes to study in Emory University to become a doctor. She remains in Atlanta and continues to do research into unusual viruses. She never marries. Leah marries a coloured man called Anatole and they have four sons. She remains in Zaire, which was formerly the Congo.
Genre
The genre of this novel is social realism. It is also based on a real political and historical situation. The narrative technique is distinct as the story is told by five different voices. The actual structure of the book imitates that of the bible-Genesis, The Revelation, the Judges, and Exodus.
General Vision or Viewpoint
The novel deals with the personal history of the Price family and their five daughters while at the same time giving a profound insight into the turbulent years of change in the Belgian Congo. The parallel is deliberate insofar as the whole story focuses on both a family and a country’s attempts to assert its sense of freedom. Under the rigid rule of Nathan Price’s missionary zeal, each of the Price girls and Orleanna his wife struggle to regain and assert their own individuality.
Simultaneously the general vision highlights a country’s attempts to come to terms with independence and the abolition of white supremacy. The general impression from both stories seems to focus on the self-destructive quality of white rule in Africa.
Cultural Context
The particular cultural context of this book is postcolonial Congo during the years after Independence. The country is politically unstable, and there is a good deal of turmoil in the wake of the transition of the Congo to Zaire following the cessation of Belgian rule. Poverty and insecurity are rampant in this culture. There is also a great amount of fear and insecurity as the Black people begin to assume power for the first time following the abolition of white supremacy.
Themes/Issues
The Family
The whole novel dramatizes the strong bonds of family and the deep capacity for forming friendships and attachments. The title of the novel highlights the disastrous effects of a fanatical commitment to religion at all costs.
Religion
Nathan Price’s commitment to the Baptist religion is based on fanaticism and a misguided zeal. He is determined to convert his family and the community in general without taking their freedom into account. His efforts turn out to be self-defeating. With the attainment of Independence, the Congolese begin to assert themselves and discover their own opinions and ideas. Nathan is finally destroyed by being thrown out of his own church and mercilessly burned.
War
The novel traces the volatile years of war and violence in the Belgian Congo. It highlights the grievous and tragic suffering caused to many people on account of this war.
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