Previous
Imagery
Definition of Irony
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how they actually are. If this seems like a loose definition... read full definition
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how they actually are. If this... read full definition
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how... read full definition
Book 1, Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—The Lilies of the Field:
In Book 1, Nathan Price alludes to the Bible in order to chastise his family for trying to bring too much luggage on the airplane.
Father surveyed our despair as if he’d expected it all along, and left it up to wife and daughters to sort out, suggesting only that we consider the lilies of the field, which have no need of a hand mirror or aspirin tablets. “I reckon the lilies need Bibles, though, and his darn old latrine spade,” Rachel muttered, as her beloved toiletry items got pitched out of the suitcase one by one. Rachel never does grasp scripture all that well.
Related Themes:
Book 1, Chapter 3
Explanation and Analysis—They're Different from Us:
In Book 1, Ruth May tries to explain her childish understanding of the religious justification for segregation. She does so by alluding to the myth of Ham from the Bible. While she gets some aspects of the segregationist reasoning correct, her childlike dialect and misunderstandings create a sad irony: even children who don't understand what they're saying can perpetrate racism.
Unlock with LitCharts A+Back home in Georgia they have their own school so they won’t be a-strutting into Rachel’s and Leah and Adah’s school. Leah and Adah are the gifted children, but they still have to go to the same school as everybody. But not the colored children. The man in church said they’re different from us and needs ought to keep to their own. Jimmy Crow says that, and he makes the laws. They don’t come in the White Castle restaurant where Mama takes us to get Cokes either, or the Zoo. Their day for the Zoo is Thursday. That’s in the Bible.
Related Themes:
Book 2, Chapter 13
Explanation and Analysis—Father of Fish Bait:
In Book 2, Orleanna describes Nathan's understanding of Christianity with metaphors, similes, and irony that highlight her confusions about his faith:
Unlock with LitCharts A+But Nathan wouldn’t hear my worries. For him, our life was as simple as paying in cash and sticking the receipt in your breast pocket: we had the Lord’s protection, he said, because we came to Africa in His service. Yet we sang in church “Tata Nzolo”! Which means Father in Heaven or Father of Fish Bait depending on just how you sing it, and that pretty well summed up my quandary. I could never work out whether we were to view religion as a life-insurance policy or a life sentence. I can understand a wrathful God who’d just as soon dangle us all from a hook. And I can understand a tender, unprejudiced Jesus. But I could never quite feature the two of them living in the same house. You wind up walking on eggshells, never knowing which Tata Nzolo is home at the moment.
Related Themes:
Book 2, Chapter 16
Explanation and Analysis—Diamonds:
In Book 2, the Prices get to know the schoolteacher Anatole better when he comes to their home for dinner. Rachel is perplexed when Anatole says he "spent some time at the diamond mines down south in Katanga," and her confusion is an example of situational irony. With allusions and her Southern dialect, she describes how Anatole has presented an entirely different idea of diamonds than the one she's used to:
Unlock with LitCharts A+When he spoke of diamonds I naturally thought of Marilyn Monroe in her long gloves and pursey lips whispering “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.” My best friend Dee Dee Baker and I have snuck off to see M.M. and Brigitte Bardot both at the matinee (Father would flatout kill me if he knew), so you see I know a thing or two about diamonds. But when I looked at Anatole’s wrinkled brown knuckles and pinkish palms, I pictured hands like those digging diamonds out of the Congo dirt and got to thinking, Gee, does Marilyn Monroe even know where they come from? Just picturing her in her satin gown and a Congolese diamond digger in the same universe gave me the weebie jeebies.
Related Themes:
Book 4, Chapter 50
Explanation and Analysis—Voting on Jesus:
In Book 4, village chief Tata Ndu interrupts one of Nathan's sermons to hold an election on Jesus Christ. In The Poisonwood Bible, democracy and Christianity are both ideologies that Westerners encourage Africans to adopt. By combining them, Tata Ndu undermines Nathan's power and generates situational irony: the two programs seem to have a fundamental incompatibility.
Unlock with LitCharts A+Tata Ndu turned directly to Father and spoke to him in surprisingly careful English, rolling his r’s, placing every syllable like a stone in a hand. “Tata Price, white men have brought us many programs to improve our thinking,” he said. “The program of Jesus and the program of elections. You say these things are good. You cannot say now they are not good.”
Related Themes:
Book 5, Chapter 71
Explanation and Analysis—Politics:
In Book 5, Rachel and her sisters have grown up and apart. They've taken drastically different paths, and any empathy Rachel has for the Congolese has evaporated now that she lives in the wealthy and white enclaves of Africa. When she flippantly and hyperbolically describes the Republic of Congo, there's dramatic irony in the fact that her perspective is so different from Leah's, whose explanation of the political strife in the Congo was just pages earlier. The following is Rachel's description:
Unlock with LitCharts A+I received quite an education about politics, as an embassy wife. The French Congo and the newly independent Republic of Congo are separated by one mere river and about a million miles of contemporaneous modern thinking. It’s because they tried to go and do it all for themselves over there, and don’t have the temperament.
Related Themes:
