The Poisonwood Bible: Personification 6 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.

Ruth May personifies her pet mongoose by describing it as if it chose her (rather than the other way around). She also gives the mongoose a human-like attitude: "It won't tolerate anybody else." When Leah suggests naming it "Ricky Ticky Tabby," she is alluding to the short story by Rudyard Kipling, in which a mongoose named Rikki-Tikki-Tavi protects an English family living in India from snakes. This story is also set in a colonial environment, but is uncritical of colonialism, unlike The Poisonwood Bible. Ruth May's mongoose name is less loaded: Stuart Little is a mouse from a children's book. Ruth May's Southern dialect is especially strong in this passage: she says things like "no sir," "a-calling," and "Mama lets it come on in the house," which indicate to reader her foreignness in the Congo.

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.

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.

Cite this Quote

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. 

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.