Post 17: Poisonwood Figure 8 #1 (Genesis)

Today, we met in our discussion groups consisting of 4-5 people per group to discuss "Genesis," from, "The Poisonwood Bible." My group first established each of the characters, and their voices in the book. We described Rachel as not belonging in the family (since the rest of the family are devout Christians, with the father being a priest), Ruth May as being innocent (well, she's a 5 year old, so she'll believe everything told to her, even when her friend said the tribes in Africa would attack her). The only thing we said about Leah was that we thought that even though her twin sister, Adah, is mute, that we think Adah is much smarter. (Alex pointed out that Adah could come up with a verse correctly whereas her twin sister could not, and I pointed out how Adah came up with various palindromes).

Now that I look at how I just described Rachel, perhaps she is the lone copper person among four gold petroglyphs on the cover?

The next thing my discussion group talked about was what we thought the Kilanga residents would react to the father trying to convert all of them to Christianity. I said that I thought he would repel them from religion since even when he first came to Kilanga, he criticized them to ideals of the Bible they were ignorant to. I added that the family even had to have a picnic to increase attendance to sermons. Alex added on that he thought the father's garden was a foreshadowing to what he thinks the response will be for the Kilanga residents: the father's garden thrived in the U.S., but when in Africa, he had to succumb to growing a garden in a way where the conditions around the garden supported it.

All in all, I think we had a great discussion today, and the discussion made me realize several things about the book thus far that I had not noticed previously.