AP Exam Essay Practice #1

Part bildungsroman and part allegory, The Poisonwood Bible follows the radical changes a vicious environment inflicts upon young Leah Price.  While the characters are certainly strong and well-developed, the alien jungle the Prices find themselves in is ultimately what drives the plot and theme of disillusionment.  The influence of this powerful setting is seen best through Leah Price.  Her evolution is cleanly broken down into a phase of sheltered idealism and one of bitter cynicism.

To understand the profound impact of the African village on Leah, one must first analyze the environment she comes from. From the information given in the novel, it can be inferred that this environment is defined largely by her family.  Leah creates an identity relative to her siblings.  She is more active than Rachel and more expressive than Adah.  More importantly, she forms her defining idea of Nathan's infallibility because of the environment formed by her family.  Before the village, Leah is defined by her relation with her family.  All of this sets up her character for a change which the entire novel centers around.

In a way, Leah's experience is very characteristic of any child growing up.  Practically everybody wants to think the best of their parents, bu time always reveals the truth.  However, Leah's disillusionment is extreme by merit of her environment.  An important fact to remember is that because of the strictness of her father, Leah is relatively sheltered upon her arrival at the village.  Of equal importance is how impressionable she is, as evidenced by how eagerly she follows her father.  With those two characteristics combined, it is unsurprising how profoundly she is affected by such a radical change in environment.  In a very short time, Leah's carefully structured life encounters injustice, prejudice, death, and other formerly foreign ideas.  With such an onslaught of disparate ideas, Leah undergoes one of the most extreme forms of character change -- a crisis of faith.  In the end, it is the cumulative effects of a strange world that unsettles her beliefs and triggers a cataclysmic character change.

Leah Price's transformation is simple, but with complex causes.  There is not one event or person that causes the change.  Rather, all the different elements and ideas that pervade the environment clash with those she has already established.  The result of this psychological brawl is the metamorphosis of a chracter.