QUOTATIONS

1) "One has only a life of oneÂ’s own." Orleanna, pg 8.

Orleanna is commenting on her daughtersÂ’ accusation that she never had a life of her own but had given everything for either her husband or the girls. Yet, in OrleannaÂ’s perspective, the girls never needed her and her husband was probably incapable of loving her. Thus all she really had was herself.

2) "We aimed for no more than to have dominion over every creature that moved upon the earth. And so it came to pass that we stepped down there on a place we believed unformed, where only darkness moved on the face of the waters." Orleanna, pg 10.

OrleannaÂ’s words have ironic echoes of both ConradÂ’s novel Heart of Darkness and the creation story from the Bible. Her husband also places himself in a god-like position over his family and over the people he is attempting to convert even though he himself is emotionally prostrate before God. It is a misplaced perception of himself, and the observation comes as close to satire as Orleanna is able to get. Neither she nor her husband had dominion over themselves, let alone the "creatures" of the earth. And the darkness which they imagined to be a part of Africa was in reality a blindness in their own hearts.

3) "We are supposed to be calling the shots here, but it doesnÂ’t look to me like weÂ’re in charge of anything, not even our own selves." Rachel, Pg 22.

RachelÂ’s early perception of how little control they have over their own situation is thoroughly accurate in spite of her own immaturity and teenage arrogance. From the very beginning, Nathan Price made the mistake of trying to run the people rather than trying to work with them. The comment is a foreshadowing of RachelÂ’s future as she never will get out of Africa in spite of her attempts to manipulate everyone. For her, the best means of survival will be to simply float along on the ebb and flow of events.

4) "ItÂ’s a heavenly paradise in the Congo, and sometimes I want to live here forever." Leah, pg 104.

The statement is foreshadowing. Leah is overwhelmed by the beauty and life of the jungle, but her wish will become reality.

5) "Father says a girl canÂ’t go to college because theyÂ’ll pour water in your shoes." Ruth May, pg. 117.

Ruth May takes her fatherÂ’s metaphor literally, but it is indicative of the way the girls have accepted his twisted judgements as fact.

6) "I wonder that religion can live or die on the strength of a faint, stirring breeze. The scent trail shifts, causing the predator to miss the pounce. One god draws in the breath of life and rises; another god expires." Adah, pg. 141.

Adah had gone with Leah to get water, but as usual had wandered a little farther and returned to the house at her own slower speed while Leah went on ahead. While walking along the trail, Adah thought she heard footsteps behind her, but each time she stopped the noise also stopped. She arrived home and slipped into a hammock to rest. While she lay there, Tata Ndu came to report to her father that they had found evidence of a lion having killed a little girl who dragged one foot. It was a report of thinly veiled triumph as Tata Ndu had been predicting that something would happen if people stopped serving the old gods. When Adah appears in the doorway, Tata Ndu appears defeated, and Nathan acts as if he has won something. AdahÂ’s observation reflects that fragile nature of faith and foreshadows her own abandoning of Christianity.

7) "When I finally got up with sharp grains imbedded in my knees, I found, to my surprise, that I no longer believed in God." Adah, pg. 171.

Adah had been punished in Sunday school because she questioned the justice of a God who would condemn people because of the color of their skin or the place where they were born. She is made to kneel on grains of uncooked rice and pray for her own soul. While she still has to comply with her fatherÂ’s expectations, she inwardly rejects Christianity and turns religious concepts in to palindromes that seem to have opposing meanings.

8) "We are going to make the Congo, for all of Africa, the heart of light." Patrice Lumumba, pg. 184.

LumumbaÂ’s inauguration speech promises a new life to the people of the Congo, but ends in disaster. Lumumba is arrested and assassinated, and the dictator who takes his place plunges the Congo into thirty years of the darkness of cruelty and poverty. The speech supports the motif of light versus darkness.

9) "I have pictured it many times-Hope!-wondering how I would catch such a thing one-handed, if it did come floating down to me from the sky. Now I find it has fallen already, and a piece of it is here beside our latrine, one red plume. In celebration I stooped down to pick it up." Adah, pg. 185.

Adah frequently quotes Dickinson, finding a personal connection in the terse verse. The feather on the ground, however, is from the bird Methuselah. He was killed by a cat on the same day that the Congo was supposedly granted independence.

10) "You always think you know more about their kind than they know about yours, which just goes to show you." Rachel 253.

Rachel observes that brother Fowles and his wife had established a friendship with the village people and had been accepted by them, a fact which her father cannot accept. While the Price family is quite ignorant about the African culture, the Africans are well aware of the ways of white people who come to them as missionaries.

11) "In Congo, it seems the land owns the people." Leah, pg. 283.

LeahÂ’s casual statement is a fact of life in the Congo and one of the primary themes of the novel. The land does "own" the people in a way that demands the observance of a way of life that is difficult for pampered Americans to comprehend. Those who cannot live by its rules are doomed to be destroyed by it, nor can they ever completely escape its effects.

Table of Contents | Downloadable/Printable Version