The Poisonwood Bible: Metaphors 15 key examples

Orleanna seems to speak directly to the reader, asking them to identify with the forest and imagine themselves within it. She personifies the jungle such that it has a conscience and eyes in its trees. The trees are metaphorically columns, as if part of an awe-inspiring structure. In the same sentence, Orleanna uses a simile to describe the trees as "like muscular animals," further personifying the forest and emphasizing how alive it is. The frogs are metaphorically "war-painted," and a simile compares them to skeletons. The vines personified into stranglers of other vines. The ant queen is personified into a "ravenous" monarch. Even seedlings on the jungle floor are personified into a choir; Orleanna gives them necks and implies they have agency. All of this imagery not only helps the reader imagine this foreign setting, but also sets up one of the themes of the novel: life and death are deeply intertwined.

Leah thinks Mama Tataba has created a garden with hills that look "like graves" or "neat burial mounds," a morbid comparison that adds to the strangeness of her new environment. The burial mound metaphor is ironic because these "burial mounds" will actually produce life-sustaining food. In another simile, Leah says her father "came walking fast as if I'd discovered a viper he meant to behead." He seeks to impose American norms on African soil and treats the Congolese villagers' way of life as an evil—like a viper he has to kill in order to be safe. Leah and her father again make the garden "as flat as the Great Plains," a simile that references a part of America dominated by agriculture.

But the flood washes away the seeds and plants, and Nathan realizes Mama Tataba was right:

Our Father had been influenced by Africa. He was out there pushing his garden up into rectangular, flood-proof embankments, exactly the length and width of burial mounds.

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Not long after he leveled the garden, Nathan reshapes it in the way Mama Tataba did earlier. This moment foreshadows much of the book's later events, when the Prices first reject, then accept, and finally rely upon the knowledge and generosity of the villagers.

With a simile, Orleanna compares Nathan's naïve faith to keeping receipts. The simple process of paying for something, keeping the receipt, and getting reimbursed for the purchase later by an authority figure makes more sense in the United States than it does in the Congo, where they are no receipts and, it seems, no reimbursements. Unlike Nathan, Orleanna doubts that their lives are inherently safe because they are on a mission to spread Christianity.

There is also irony in double meaning of "Nzolo," since it can either mean something holy or something humorously and unintentionally gross. Orleanna expands this ironic misunderstanding to show the reader her wavering faith in God. She says she understands the Father of Fish Bait, a vengeful God who would metaphorically "just as soon dangle us from a hook." She also understands a kind and conventional Jesus who is Father in Heaven. But she cannot imagine them metaphorically "living in the same house," as in, being part of the same divinity, which is how Protestants understand God and Jesus.

Kakakaka metaphorically turns the babies into a "small black pitcher" and then spills the contents of the pitcher. This is a sad and vivid image of the death by dehydration that babies suffer if they have untreated diarrhea. Whatever kakakaka is (presumably some sort of bacterial infection), it causes water to leave the babies faster than it can be replenished.  The reader isn't told the English name of the disease, just that it spreads more quickly during rainy seasons. Eventually, Adah says that wave of deaths has subsided, and she uses a simile to describe the aftermath:

Now the thunderstorms have ended. The funerals are drying up as slowly as the puddles. [...] The women beat out their sisal mats and replant their fields while grieving for lost children.

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Just as the rain caused the deaths, so too do the funerals seem to mirror the water left over after the deluge: they dry up, but slowly. The impact of both the thunderstorms and the kakakaka they brought remains a mark on the land and village. Nor do the mothers who lost children have any downtime to grieve. Instead, they simultaneously mourn and do the housework necessary to sustain themselves and their families.

In a simile, Orleanna compares herself to the family's pet bird, Methuselah. When Nathan opened Methuselah's cage, expecting the bird to fly away, Methuselah refused out of fear and disuse of his wings. Orleanna sees her own willingness to follow and obey Nathan in the same light: she feels she is simply not used to exerting her own agency and therefore doesn't. Metaphorically, then, she "had no wings." Orleanna also personifies the Congo into a "barefoot bride of men" who promised the Congo safety and growth but instead robbed the country. This comparison reminds the reader of Orleanna's own past as an unsuspecting, obedient, and impoverished bride to Nathan.

First, she says she has metaphorically tried to follow in his path, "[setting] my shoes squarely into his footprints" by agreeing with him and doing as he says, to no benefit. She doesn't feel she's come any closer to a connection with God or a righteous certainty in her actions. Then she says that there is "a great holy war going on in my father's mind"—a war in which she, her sisters, and her mother are meant to participate.  In a moment both metaphorical and literal, Leah says, "I'm not even allowed to carry a gun." In one sense, she means that she cannot carry a metaphorical gun in her father's imagined war. In other words, she cannot take on any responsibility because he doesn't trust her, in part because she is female. Literally speaking, he would not let her carry a gun, either. In Nathan's understanding of the world, that isn't a woman's place. Despite Leah's attempts to help, nothing she does can be good enough, nor can she even understand what Nathan's aim is.

Fowles not only quotes the Bible from memory but cites the book, approximate location ("a little farther on" from Romans 10), and translation he's pulled his quote from. This citational thoroughness lends legitimacy to his argument and illustrates to the reader and Nathan alike that Fowles knows the Bible inside and out. Fowles even quotes from Nathan's preferred Bible translation. Using all these markers of legitimacy, Fowles argues something that Nathan does not, and perhaps will never, agree with: that Africans deserve their respect and appreciation.

Fowles quotes a metaphor from Romans 11. First, the metaphor compares a part of a whole to a "handful of dough," then to the "root of a tree." The point made in the original biblical context is that all Israelites are holy as a result of God blessing Abraham and the other Jewish patriarchs. But the biblical author goes on to say that it is not only the Israelites, the original "branches" of the root, who are consecrated. A "grafted" branch (that is, a Christian who is not Hebrew) may also be holy, but only because of the blessedness of the root.

Fowles extrapolates this metaphor out to suggest that any "graft," or any stranger in a community, is supported by that community. Essentially, any benefits the graft enjoys are because of the root that provides those benefits, and the graft cannot forget this. Fowles compares Nathan and his family to the graft in order to suggest Nathan should have more respect and gratitude toward the Congolese villagers who have supported and welcomed the Prices.

Leah metaphorically calls the jungle a green wall, a seemingly impenetrable and mysterious force. And her simile says that this jungle is "as permanent as a heartbeat"—in other words, the jungle is a steady and often unnoticed but necessary and omnipresent part of Congolese life. Another metaphor makes the humans into "little mice," which demonstrates that anyone living in the Congo is vulnerable and will have to fight for his or her life without any certainty in what comes next. When Leah reflects on American farming, she uses a simile to compare farmers on their tractors to "kings on thrones." Americans, she says, feel an ownership and power over their land. In contrast, the Congo's natural environment seems to control the people who live there. Leah also conjures up visual, tactile, and auditory imagery to describe the forest: she mentions bird calls, the breathing of animals, and the color and wetness of the flora.

The ants are metaphorically "boiling" the landscape. With a simile, Leah compares the ants to "black flowing lava." The ants also make the trees metaphorically seethe and turn the grass into a "field of dark daggers." The first two of these comparisons evokes painfully hot liquid, and all of the metaphors are violent or destructive in some way. Additionally, Leah's description of the ants is full of visual and sensory imagery: every surface is covered by these tiny black creatures that constantly scurry over the landscape, and the ants even smell "vinegary" when stepped on. All of this figurative language allows the reader to imagine the overwhelming violence and pain of an ant swarm.

This stylized retelling of late-20th-century African history is accurate: during the Cold War, the United States and its allies were extraordinarily concerned that underdeveloped nations like the newly independent Congo would elect communist leaders and ally themselves with the Soviet Union. Perhaps the most famous example of the Soviet Union and United States battling over a foreign nation's allegiance is the Vietnam War. One of the purposes of The Poisonwood Bible is to persuade American readers, through the viewpoints of American characters like Orleanna, that they should oppose their government's interference in the domestic operations of other countries.

In this extended chess metaphor, the world powers that seek to manipulate the Congo are calm chess players, moving powerful and vulnerable pieces alike to achieve their goals. As part of this violent game, the chess players weigh the benefits and drawbacks of certain African leaders they would like to either place into power or depose. The simile that compares "African names" to flowers "crushed idly between thumb and forefinger" indicates that, just as the chess players do not care about the well-being of their pawns, they do not mind sacrificing leaders like Lumumba to get what they want. The powers-that-be use, manipulate, and kill these African leaders without much thought or care. Both racism and imperialism are ideologies that enable the West to "idly" kill or imprison African leaders for the West's gain.

Several different animals are personified: the "warthog children," the baboons that do not understand their imminent death, and the insects that panic. This allows the reader to sympathize with the animals' predicament, and it also emphasizes how life and death are connected: only by burning these innocent animals alive can the villagers survive. A metaphor makes the air, filled with insects, into a "pulpy soup," while the insects swarm so thickly that the air seems to turn to liquid. The visual imagery, which includes this metaphor as well as the descriptions of the animals and the fire, gives the reader a vivid picture of what this unique hunt looks like:

Others would not come out and so they burned: small flame-feathered birds, the churning insects, and a few female baboons who had managed against all odds to carry their pregnancies through the drought. With their bellies underslung with precious clinging babies, they loped behind the heavy-maned males, who would try to save themselves, but on reaching the curtain of flame where the others passed through, they drew up short. Crouched low. Understanding no choice but to burn with their children.

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The baboons are further personified here: the females have "precious clinging babies," and the males "[understand] no choice but to burn with their children." The word choice here is subtle, but it effectively humanizes and creates sympathy for these animals. They do not have "offspring" or "juveniles" but instead have "precious clinging babies." The male baboons likewise seem to eventually have enough intelligence to resign themselves to death. 

Adah reflects on the connection between life and death: in her reasoning, one is necessary for the other to exist. Adah metaphorically turns Ruth May's death into a reverse-birth by comparing two physiological elements: a person's first and last breaths, and the "howling" of both a baby and a dying person. She calls the death a "closing parenthesis," and Ruth May herself a palindrome (a word or phrase that reads the same forwards and backwards, of which Adah has made several throughout the novel). "Other-than-life" is a poetic way to refer to death, and it reminds the reader of the fragility of life and the interconnected, cyclical nature of life and death. As Adah says, death metaphorically "crowds down around the edges of living."

Leah uses a simile to compare the place "where the largest rules are made," which can be understood to mean America and Europe, to heaven. Just as the God that Nathan believes in seems arbitrary, fickle, distant and uncaring, the powerful men of the world are likewise withdrawn and cruel.

Metaphorically, for these powerful men who run Western governments, "white and black lives are different kinds of currencies." White lives—such as those of the murdered foreigners and even, to an extent, the lives of the Prices—are valued enough for foreign nations to take notice when those lives are threatened. Metaphorically comparing white lives to the "hard Belgian franc" also reminds the reader that this imbalance is a result of colonialism, since Belgium once controlled the Congo. Because white lives, like the Belgian franc, are tied to something valuable (an influential former colonial power and gold, respectively), they are worth protecting. Congolese lives are metaphorically compared to Congolese currency—like the currency, Congolese lives are not valued by people in the West or elsewhere.

This description of the jungle helps the reader understand how its composition influences farming and life in the Congo. The visual imagery of red soil, fungi, and vines allows us to imagine this elaborate and fragile balance of plants and animals. Leah personifies the jungle, first with simile in which she compares "clearing a rain forest" to "stripping an animal first of its fur, then its skin," which indicates how abhorrent she finds deforesting. The personified land "howls," has a face, and can die. Another simile compares the destroyed soil to "the mouths of whales." Metaphorically, "fungi and vines throw a blanket" over the destroyed earth. Finally, the "rowdy society of flora and fauna" evokes a crowded, lively, and barely cooperative community. 

Leah also uses the idiom "fly on a wing and a prayer" to describe the often unsuccessful attempt to grow annual crops. (As opposed to perennial plants, annuals must be replanted each harvest, so they are not permanent parts of the land.) To fly on a wing and a prayer means to attempt something that will probably not succeed, like a plane landing with only one wing left. 

She metaphorically calls this ecosystem a "trembling geologic plate." This is also literal, since Africa (like all continents) is shaped by the movement of tectonic plates. But the plate becomes metaphorical when Leah describes deforestation in the Congo as "[clearing] off part of the plate" and creating an imbalance. This imbalance causes the plate to tilt and everything to fall off, just as deforestation hurts the rest of the environment in the Congo.

In this passage, the personified land revives itself from its previous murder and becomes alive again. The murder of the land is a metaphor that could refer either to the destruction of Congolese self-determination or the destruction of the actual land for food and natural resources (or both). Personified animals "utter joyful, astonishing words," which makes the natural environment of Congo sound like a being with agency that desires self-determination and a capable government as much as the Congolese people do.

Methuselah, the Prices' pet parrot who was eaten after Nathan set him free, also returns as a symbol in this passage. Recall that Methuselah repeated the words and phrases of the Price family, the villagers, and Brother Fowles. Alongside curse words and Kikongo greetings, Methuselah also apparently picked up the call for Congolese independence. This reference to Methuselah could be read as a metaphor for those killed or harmed in fight for independence: despite their deaths, the call for independence survives, and their ideas continue to spread.