The Poisonwood Bible: Book 3, Chapter 26 Summary & Analysis

Orleanna begins by addressing a “little beast,” speaking as the little beast’s mother. Orleanna points out that there have always been fathers like Nathan, who think that daughters should work, bear children, and do nothing else. She hoped for a day when her daughters could walk away from their father’s ideas.

Orleanna thinks back to her “downfall.” She had a happy childhood in Jackson, Mississippi, and survived the Great Depression in conditions similar to the ones she’d find in the Congo years later. Her father, Bud Wharton, was an eye doctor. When Orleanna was older, she became a “Free Will Baptist,” something that irritated her father, who believed in the “religion” of his medical practice, and nothing else. Orleanna met Nathan at the age of 17, when he was handsome and charismatic. He was already very pious, and told Orleanna that he was going to “save” her. Nathan visited Orleanna all the time, while also working hard with his congregation. Marrying him felt like the natural next step.

Orleanna married Nathan in the late 1930s. After that, she was saddened when America declared war on Japan and Nathan shipped off to fight, despite the fact that (as a clergyman) he was technically exempt from duty. Nathan was only gone for three months. His company fought in the Pacific, and saw active combat late one night. Nathan was struck in the head by a shell fragment, and ended up suffering a concussion that sent him to the hospital. He credits God with saving his life. Orleanna claims that this was the last she knows of the man she married—a kind, funny, affectionate young man.

After Nathan left the hospital, he was sent to Bataan, where he and his peers were captured, marched through the jungle, and tortured and starved for months. At the last moment, MacArthur’s troops freed Nathan from the Death March, saving his life. When Nathan returned, Orleanna could see right away that he’d become a different man.

Now back in the South, Orleanna compares her early days of marriage to Nathan (After he returned from Bataan) to being dominated by a “foreign power.” She felt that she was married to an idea, a plan, rather than a person. Nathan had ambitions to preach God’s plan for the rest of his life, and impress upon his own children the laws of Christianity. He interpreted Adah’s medical problems as God’s punishment—though for what, Orleanna was never sure.

Nathan believed one thing: God rewards the righteous. Orleanna went through her marriage with a constant sense of being punished—for being beautiful; for being ogled by other men; for giving birth to a child with a serious medical problem; for being a bad wife. Orleanna tells her “little beast” that she’s long since lost her wings, though she may have gotten them back. She concludes by comparing the Congo to a “bride” who’s had her jewels taken from her by men who “promised the Kingdom.”