Essay #1

As many individuals in there lifetime experience changes that put them out of there so-called "comfort zone" whatever it may be, not many are torn out of there home, the place that is all they ever known to move half way across the world, Leah along with her family members in the Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, did. Leah faces the obstacles of going into the Congo as a young teenager, who has been basically brainwashed by her father when it comes to their religion and faith, but soon comes to the realization that she has an opinion of her own and that maybe what she'd been taught in her home life in America wasn't really her opinion at all, but her father's.

The novel starts off with Leah being the most excited child of the family about going to the Congo to share her father's love for God because to Leah being ripped right out of the only home she's ever known in America doesn't mean anything, home to Leah is being with her dad and pleasing him and making him happy alongside her family. As Leah begins to discover who she is as a person she begins to see all the things that she has been sheltered from her entire life up until this point. Unfortunately, Leah's individual thoughts and opinions creates isolation from the only home she has ever known, her father. Leah is now able to see the "real" person her father is and Leah no longer has a sense of knowing what home is and home was.

Now as hard as this experience has been for Leah there were so many enriching factors that she realized from this experience. She was able to discover the person that she wanted to be and is able to make her life the way she wants it. In the novel Leah is able to grow as an individual not something that her father has brainwashed into being what he wants instead of her. Leah receives a fresh new start in life and is able to rebuild the meaning of "home" in a new found meaning.

So yes, a journey such as Leah's is in many ways is alienating and enriching. But not just Leah, all the girls in the novel realized who they wanted to be as individuals and what life means to them in their own interpretation, which is clearly expressed as a much larger meaning by the author.