Quintessence

The obvious choice for the quintessential cereal is Honey Nut Cheerios. Slightly sweetened for flavor and yet a completely classic favorite. One may ask why choose altered Honey Nut flavored cereal over the original Cheerios. They are almost identical in appearance and texture so what gives Honey Nut Cheerios the edge? The answer is that they simply taste better. This is the secret to becoming the quintessential cereal: universal appeal. For the adults who don't want to feel like they are eating candy for breakfast, Honey Nut Cheerios are a healthy way to have a hearty breakfast. Adults don't want sugar-coated corn flakes or cookie shaped cereal, they want tasty simplicity. As for the children who can so easily be sucked in to marshmallow shapes and chocolate puffs, Honey Nut Cheerios has enough flavor to hold its own. In contrast to its blander precursor, the golden honey taste and nutty savor hold the affection of people of all ages.


"It is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all." Laura Ingalls Wilder

Lit Circle Post: Exodus

In Exodus, we see the Price women leave the Congo and also leave each other as they go their separate ways in life. This book is about leaving as Exodus means a departure. Prompted by Ruth May's leaving this life, the Prices, with the exception of Nathan, all journey to leave Kilanga and the Congo. This is when each character's story begins to separate from the others.

In our Lit. circle discussion, we talked about how each character chose what things were important to them. Without their father's will to decide what to believe in for them they are free to think whatever they want. This idea of freedom has been throughout the Poisonwood Bible from the bigger picture of the Congo to the smaller metaphor of Methuselah. In contrast to the devastated Congo and their pitiful parrot, the Price girls were not so dwarfed by their freedom. Leah, Adah, and Rachel all went on to lead argueably successful lives after their independence day from their father. Adah becomes a doctor and Rachel ends up owning her own hotel. However, no one can say that they all were not changed by their new found freedom.

If you look back at who these characters were at the beginning of the book you will find that they are almost a complete mirror image of themselves. All these characters have changed as Adah forshadows in Judges, "None of us is the same: Lehcar, Hael, Hada. Annaelro" (276).Take Rachel for example who wanted to return to Georgia while they were still in the airplane. She ends up making her home in Africa, on the very land that she cursed and begged to leave. Rachel resides in the Equatorial, a hotel that a late husbanded bestowed upon her. The Equatorial itself is symbolic as it serves as a dividing line between two very different worlds of Africa. Rachel has literally and metaphorically separated herself from her family, mainly Leah. Yet she retains the same ignorance in thinking that she is the one being alienated. She is still Rachel as we know her, shallow and vain; but she has also changed to fit into Africa.

Leah is perhaps the most noticable example of how Africa changed this family. After Ruth May's death, Leah stays in Africa with Anatole and eventually becomes his wife. She falls in love with the people of Africa and the land itself. This is not the same Leah who kissed the ground her father walked on and worshipped the Christian god of America. That Leah is gone, perhaps buried in Kilanga with the body of her sister. The new Leah renounces the father she once praised and worships the pagan gods or any god that will listen to her prayers. She has also gone from a tomboy who climbs trees with the boys to a wife and mother. She has chosen the more practical side of religion and the natural side of it as well. Leah has moved away from her father and made her alliance with everything he fought against.

Adah ironically is deeply distraught about losing her one defining characteristic. When she is medical school she meets a neurologist who fixes her crooked body and hindering limp. She is physically healed but admits to some feeling of discontent about the change. "Will I lose myself entirely if I lose my limp" (441)? The physical change of Adah being able to walk without a limp is not as important as the change of how she views herself. Who is Adah if not the crooked benduku? She does not know how to be the swift and graceful bird because all that she believes is based on her slant. Without her disability, she has no excuse to be so bitter. She can no longer feel betrayed by the world which is a fundamental part of her "Adah moral code". She needed her limp to justify herself and Africa took that away and changed her in the process.

Lastly is Orleanna who goes through a different kind of change as Adah notes, separating Orleanna's backward name with a period. After the death of her favorite child and her exodus from Africa, Orleanna loses her hope. A part of her died with Ruth May as I suppose a part of every character died. Orleanna handles her independence more like the Congo and Methuselah. In essence she lets it kill her. In the death of her child and hope she received her liberation. "We married with simple hopes: enough to eat and children who might outlive us" (387). She was let down, but found the strength to keep moving for the remainder of her family. Her change was the strength to leave her husband and the realization that she loves the things she can lose.



"Dreams are not enough to win a war"