Barbara Kingsolver Trivia

1. What type of word play device does Rachel use throughout the novel?

From Quiz Meet the Prices: Rachel

Answer: Malapropisms

A malapropism occurs when a character confuses one word for another, similar-sounding word with a different meaning to humorous effect. It gets its name from Mrs Malaprop, a character in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's play 'The Rivals', who often gets her words mixed up (such as 'pineapple' for 'pinnacle' and 'perpendiculars' for 'particulars'). Rachel also gets her words mixed up throughout the book; examples include 'Cape Carniveral' for 'Cape Canaveral', 'congregations' for 'conjugations', 'philanderist' for 'philanthropist' and 'piccadillies' for 'peccadilloes'. Incidentally, Rachel also uses more slang than any of her sisters. (Adah is the one who loves palindromes.)

From Quiz Meet the Prices: Leah

Answer: Orleanna

Nathan hears Methuselah say 'damn' (as it turns out, he's learned far worse from Brother Fowles!) and scolds the three older girls for teaching an animal to swear, assuming it was one of them. Rachel apologises and all three girls are given the Verse (Numbers 29:34) as punishment. However, Leah reveals that it was Orleanna who used the word, and the girls are covering for their mother; she said it repeatedly when she found out that the cake mix the family had brought to the Congo had dried out in the heat. She was planning to make a cake for Rachel's sixteenth birthday, but the cake mix was too hard to use.

From Quiz Meet the Prices: Adah

Answer: Palindromes

Adah has the most colourful and poetic voice of the four sisters, and loves playing with words. She reads books back to front and often thinks in palindromes, which are words or phrases that are spelled the same forwards and backwards (such as 'poor Dan is in a droop'). During church services, she mentally sings palindromic phrases to hymns such as 'Amazing Grace'. She also prefers to spell her name without the letter H. Both she and Leah are gifted, but their father does not believe in further education for girls.

From Quiz Meet the Prices: Ruth May

Answer: Mother, May I?

Although Ruth May makes comments about Africans that come across as racist (such as calling them the Tribes of Ham), she is also the first of the Price children to mix with local children. She teaches them to play 'Mother, May I?' (rendered as 'ma-da-meh-yi'). Leah is jealous that the children are willing to play with Ruth May, especially as they pick the game up quickly, while she has trouble communicating with them. However, she does befriend one boy, Pascal, who teaches her Kikongo words.

From Quiz The Poisonwood Bible

Answer: Congo

Nathan is a Baptist missionary. He believes that it is his calling to save the souls of Africa.

From Quiz Poisonwood Trivia

Answer: hid their extra items on their bodies

The Southern Baptist Mission League hinted to them that the passengers themselves were not weighed. The girls all wore many layers of clothing and underwear and their coats over top. In their pockets and tucked in their waistbands, they brought tools and food and other goods. It made a very uncomfortable flight for them.

From Quiz The Poisonwood Bible

Answer: Rachel

Rachel is the oldest, Leah and Adah are next (they are twins), and Ruth May is the youngest.

From Quiz "The Poisonwood Bible" Part 1: Genesis

Answer: Adah

According to wikipedia.com, hemiplegia is "a condition where a vertical half of a patient's body is weak or paralyzed." Adah is born with this condition and it is assumed that she will never be able to speak. Adah does not receive special attention in Africa because of her disease, much unlike in America.

From Quiz "Animal Dreams" by Barbara Kingsolver

Answer: High school biology

Codi really returns because her father, Doc Homer, has Alzheimer's and "his mind had begun to roam in alarming new pastures."

From Quiz "Poisonwood Bible"

Answer: Georgia

The father begged and begged the church council until they finally let them go. He's not well thought of!

From Quiz Meet the Prices: Rachel

Answer: Platter

Anatole helps interpret Nathan's sermons for the village congregation. Nathan invites him to dinner, seeing him as an ally, and Orleanna serves dinner on a fine china platter painted with blue flowers that had been left behind by a previous inhabitant. The mood turns sour when Anatole warns Nathan that Tata Ndu, the village chief, disapproves of villagers going to church and sees it as a moral decline. He also tries to explain the role of Tata Kuduvundu, the local witch doctor, who Nathan dismisses as a 'nut'. Orleanna sends the girls away to wash up, but Rachel stays behind to watch the argument. Nathan sends Anatole away and Orleanna nervously makes a joke, and Nathan responds by screaming at her to shut up and smashing the platter. He accuses Orleanna of being too fond of the platter and implies that she was flirting with Anatole by serving him food on it.

From Quiz Meet the Prices: Leah

Answer: A tablecloth

The Price girls are given embroidery equipment for Christmas and Orleanna suggests they start making items for hope chests in their free time. Rachel works on several items, such as monogrammed guest towels and crocheted collars, Leah works on a cross-stitch tablecloth, and Adah mocks the whole project by outlining handkerchiefs in black and making other weird items. As Leah says later in the novel, the hope chests turn out to be representative of the girls' love lives: Rachel has several failed marriages, Leah stays married to the same man and has children with him, and Adah never marries at all. Ruth May, the only one who did not have a hope chest, never lives long enough to be married.

From Quiz Meet the Prices: Adah

Answer: She was eaten by a lion.

Orleanna sends Leah and Adah into the forest to fetch water. She often comes home alone due to being slower than Leah, but is used to walking alone; unknown to Orleanna, she has been following Methuselah, the parrot left behind by a previous tenant. Adah feels she is being followed and arrives home late; while this is going on, Tata Ndu reports to the Price family that Adah had been eaten by a lion, seeing blood and assuming it was hers, but it turns out to be a bushbuck. At this point, Adah reveals herself. Nathan punishes both twins by making them write out the chapter on Cain and Abel.

From Quiz Meet the Prices: Ruth May

Answer: Stuart Little

Ruth May loves animals and keeps the mongoose as a pet after it keeps visiting the Prices' house, and later bonds with her. Leah tells her to call it Rikki-Tikki-Tavi after the Rudyard Kipling character, but Ruth May calls it Stuart Little instead. She also has a pet chameleon called Leon, who the Prices find one day on Leah's bed. Methuselah is a talking African grey parrot who used to belong to Brother Fowles, a Catholic priest who later visits the Prices, and Saint Matthew is Leah's toy sock monkey.

From Quiz The Poisonwood Bible

Answer: Rachel, Leah, Adah, and Ruth May

The ironic thing about Rachel and Leah is that Rachel is the oldest, unlike the biblical story of Jacob.

From Quiz Poisonwood Trivia

Answer: Goat roasted over open flame

They made the goat into some kind of stew and it was so spicy hot, the girls wanted to spit it right out. Their mom threatened them with a thrashing if they dared to be that impolite. They were surprised as their mother had never laid a finger on them in their lives.

From Quiz The Poisonwood Bible

Answer: Emily Dickinson

She starts her chapter with the line, "Because I could not stop for Death/ He kindly stopped for me." This is a famous first line of one of Emily Dickinson's poems.

From Quiz "The Poisonwood Bible" Part 1: Genesis

Answer: Mama Tataba

Mama Mwanza's legs was burned when her house caught on fire so she uses her hands like most people use their feet. Mama Nguza is described as having a big goiter under her chin. And Tata Zinsana (not Mama) is described as missing all of his fingers.

From Quiz "Animal Dreams" by Barbara Kingsolver

Answer: A war zone

Hallie heads to Nicaragua in the mid-80s to teach sustainable farming. Not the safest place, but Hallie is over-the-moon happy to to be "fighting" for a cause.

From Quiz "Poisonwood Bible"

Answer: Kilanga

This is the site "Father" wanted. Everyone else in the family thinks he's nuts!

From Quiz Meet the Prices: Rachel

Answer: Termite

The villagers' nickname for Rachel is 'Mvula', which is a pale white termite that comes out after the rain. Rachel is very pale and has white-blonde hair, of which she is very proud, but which also attracts a lot of attention from the villagers. They believe that Rachel is so pale because she stays inside too much and is frightened of everything. Mama Tataba, a local woman who initially helps the Prices with cooking and housework, also calls them 'fufu nsala'. Orleanna discovers that 'fufu' in this context is not manioc porridge, but a rat that hides from sunlight. In other words, Mama Tataba thinks the Prices are cowards, and resents the girls for being ungrateful; she makes a nut butter from groundnuts, but Rachel complains because she wants smooth Jiffy peanut butter.

From Quiz Meet the Prices: Leah

Answer: Patrice Lumumba

Patrice Lumumba, the first Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is mentioned several times in the earlier part of the book; Nathan dismisses him as an uneducated postal worker and a Communist, but Anatole admires him and Leah is impressed on hearing him speak, saying Lumumba made her want to believe in every word. She and Nathan fly out to Leopoldville when the Congo becomes independent, and watch the various speeches, along with the Underdowns, Belgian Mission League representatives who later leave the country. Lumumba is assassinated on the same day that Ruth May is killed by a snake; Eeben Axelroot tells Rachel beforehand that Lumumba is going to be killed, though Rachel is too ignorant to really understand.

From Quiz Meet the Prices: Adah

Answer: After being punished at Sunday School

Although Adah almost never speaks, she asked her Sunday School teacher at the age of five whether G-d would really condemn children to eternal suffering just for being born in the wrong place and not being baptised. Her teacher punished her by making her kneel on grains of rice while praying for Adah's soul. When Adah got up from the floor, she realised that she no longer believed in G-d. She also points out that in Kikongo, the inflection of a word can change its meaning; in church, they call G-d 'Tata Nzolo', meaning 'Most Beloved Father', but 'nzolo' can also be a type of miniature potato or a grub used for bait. One major conflict in Kilanga is the conflict between Christianity, as preached by Nathan Price, and the local folk religion, which is polytheistic. Nelson worries that the Prices have brought rain upon the village by angering the local gods, and by the fact that Leah and Adah are twins (or 'báza'), as it is customary for mothers to abandon their twin babies in the forest.

From Quiz Meet the Prices: Ruth May

Answer: Diamonds

Eeben Axelroot's plane is full of sacks of food, but it also contains sacks of rocks which turn out to be diamonds. While Ruth May is visiting the hospital, Nathan and the doctor, a Belgian, get into an argument about Patrice Lumumba and Congolese politics. Nathan dismisses Lumumba as an uneducated postal worker. While Nathan is getting his hair cut, Axelroot gets Ruth May alone and warns her not to say anything about the diamonds, or her mother will get sick and die.

From Quiz The Poisonwood Bible

Answer: Methuselah

Nathan highly dislikes the bird because it is loud and irreverent. He tries to let it go, but it stays nearby, so the Prices still consider it to be their pet.

From Quiz Poisonwood Trivia

Answer: they didn't plant in hills

Mama Tataba told them to plant in hills or it wouldn't grow. They ignored her as they thought they knew more about gardening than she knew about Africa. When the rainy season began and the seeds were all washed out, they realized she was right and replanted doing it the African way.

From Quiz The Poisonwood Bible

Answer: poisonwood tree

The word "Bangala" has two meanings, but the way Nathan uses it, it means poisonwood tree. The second meaning is something precious and dear, which is the way he means to pronounce it.

From Quiz "The Poisonwood Bible" Part 1: Genesis

Answer: World War II

Nathan is a wounded hero from WWII but he does not like to talk about his war experiences.

From Quiz "Animal Dreams" by Barbara Kingsolver

Answer: Nicholas

Codi read somewhere that the brain organizes information in sets no longer than four; she wonders if that is why everyone calls Nicolas "the baby." John Tucker, named after Emelina's late brother (who was named after a car!), is the oldest of J.T. and Emelina's five boys. Mason is the next youngest child. Viola is actually John Tucker's, Mason's and Nicholas's grandmother!

From Quiz "Poisonwood Bible"

Answer: ants

You have to admit, being killed by ants is an unusual way to go!

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