Essay Assignment #1

Enlightenment From Exile

     To be exiled is to be alone.  In The Poisonwood Bible, Kingsolver utilized the true meaning of exile by creating a huge cultural and geographical distance between the Price family's familiar home to their mission in the Congo.  Although each and every member of the Price family found themselves stranded seemingly on an entirely different planet known as Kilanga, one special invalid truly adopted the life of loneliness.  Adah, the impaired twin of Leah, ventured throughout her life knowing that she would always be different from everyone else around, yet while she faced her disabilities and lived a lonely lifestyle, she also gained new, enlightening perspectives on betrayal, truth, and the ways of life through experience and years of deep thought.
     Throughout her teenage years, Adah could not relate to any of her peers.  Either due to physical disability or skin tone, Adah perceived herself as an outcast to the society she had been placed into.  Even her own family members regarded her as "slow" and placed her second on their list of protective priority as seen in the episode with the army ants.  Finding herself exiled by the rest of the world and marked as the girl who dragged her feet when she walked, the little invalid truly faced a life of exile.  As years passed, Adah replayed the incident with the army ants over and over again in her head and questioned her mother's choice to leave her for dead, and she felt from that day forward that she was truly alone in the world.  Although Adah did not express emotion like the others in the novel, she still managed to acquire the lingering emptiness that is gained through exile.  Once she had spent many chapters focusing on the events of her life and realized the ways in which the world turned its back on her, she remained a changed person throughout the rest of the novel.  As in reality, exile effects people in the same manner.
     Exile, similar to the many trials of life, may also have enriching effects on one's life.  Referring again to Adah from The Poisonwood Bible, she gained a sense of enlightenment through her exiled past.  Even as a teenager, Adah's introverted lifestyle gifted her with the ability to grasp secondary language and alternative meaning to everything.  Instead of communicating with the others around her, Adah chose to reflect on past events and gain deeper understanding of life.  Changed from her life in the Congo, she used her wisdom to set high goals and become accepted as a vital component in the field of medicine where she later grew as an individual and achieved great things.  Without her rough history as an exile, she would not have been able to achieve what she did.  Her loneliness as a child opened her mind passed her previous boundaries and enriched her future.
     Nobody on planet earth would want to feel the pain and emptiness felt while being exiled, but a life of self-reflection lacking outer influences could be a gift in itself.  Although the life of loneliness can be perceived as nothing more than a curse, this lifestyle still served Adah well in the end.  Whether viewed as a curse or a gift, exile, like all walks of life, could lead to a fulfilling sense of enlightenment.  Adah served as an example in order to teach readers to be willing to endure a life of struggle to ultimately obtain wisdom and success.