Adah Eyes

For this entry I wanted to focus on one of the less prominent characters in the book, The Poison wood bible. Her name is Adah Price daughter of the Evangelical baptist. Adah was born a cripple of sorts, in the womb her twin sister, Leah took the most of the nourishment while Adah 's brain weakened and starved which resulted in her hemiplegia. She is trapped inside a body that is slow and crippled on the right side, she can't speak very well, shouts and jumbled sounds are all that are heard and her vision is distorted. Here is a quote from the book describing what Adah sees: "Through Adah eyes the world is a boggle with colors and shapes competing for a half- brain attention." Adah is smart quirky and inquisitive she notices little details about people and never stops reading and thinking. The Price family came to The Congo all of the daughters envisioning different things. Ruth may who is four expected primitive cannibals. Rachel, the oldest expecting poverty and bashfulness. Leah, expected to meet people with families and houses that were proud and happy. Adah didn't expect anything, she stuck to her books and drawing and writing filling notebooks by the weeks.
When the family lived in the Congo for a while, they came to know the people and familiarize themselves with their surroundings. They began to gossip and talk with the people but they all passed their judgments on the place, all but Adah she doesn't speak. Adah's consciousness it fully functioning and she is a very individual and unique person. The frustration of having all of Adah's ideas and thoughts and and inquisitive mind while trapped in a slow bumbling dysfunctional body must be over whelming. Adah is forced to write down what she wants to say when she wants to, so she keeps many of her thoughts and ideas to herself. Adah describes, in the book what the advantages of silence are: people assume she is feeble minded or deaf and make a show of their own limitations. She is a prisoner to a overloaded mind full of feelings, thoughts and ideas that are just trying to find a way out. Many people have trouble expressing their thoughts and opinions in words, and outloud but they are lucky because people like Adah don't have any words at all.