Some Significant Quotes

In Response to reading pages 35 to 68 of The Poisonwood Bible I have chosen to quotes from each chapter within the reading. I believe that the following quotes have all have either significance or potential significance to the book.

“God merely expects us to do our own share of the perspiring for life’s bounty, Leah” (37)

This is shows a belief that Nathan Price has. So far I think that he is someone very diligent and who finds it his duty and responsibility to work his hardest. He faced war, probably giving his all, receiving “injur[ies] he doesn’t ever talk about, nor being one to boast” (37). I think this trait of his may show up later in the book as part of his character.

“Some people find him overly stern and frightening, but that is only because he was gifted with such keen judgment and purity of heart” (41)

Leah really looks up to father. She sees in him things that most other people don’t that she can admire. I think this quote shows that Leah doesn’t just want to suck up to her father because he is her father and holds a high position in the household. I think she sees this person in him that she thinks is really special and that is why she acts the way she does.

“In a certain way they seemed naked irregardless”(47)

Nakedness has been an issue in this book so far. It starts with Nathan Price’s speech against “Nakedness…and the darkness of the soul! (27) and is brought again by both Rachel and Adah. Before it mainly referred to physical nakedness and its consequences, but this quote expresses them as being naked even when they are clothed. It makes me wonder how they would still seem naked.

“Considering my whole situation, I was not about to be bothered by the spectrum of death at our picnic” (48)

Here, Rachel sets herself aside from her other sisters, not bothered by the fact that the chickens they are eating were just killed while her sisters are. The conclusion is that somehow Rachel is self centered in feeling sorry for herself and that she is morally different than her sisters for her conscience to not be bothered. On the other hand, Rachel might also be more realistic and logical in the ways of life, which might come with her older age and possibly maturity.

“A child shouldn’t think of herself better than others because she is blonde as a white rabbit”(52)

I think this quote is important because it answers Rachel’s question as to why “[her] parents allow the situation to present itself” (48). They are hoping that this experience will make Rachel a more modest person. I also think that this quote is important because it deals with the fact that someone should not think higher of himself just because he looks a certain. This seems to also be an issue in the book.

“It appears to me that their bodies just get worn our, about the same way as our worldly goods do” (53)

Here is one of the few times Orleana has spoken up in the book so far. She tries to reason with Nathan that the Congolese people put there bodies through a lot because they don’t have the same worldly goods that people who are better off have. Orleana has her own opinion other than Nathan’s that seems possibly logical. I also think that this shows that she feels somewhat sorry for the Congolese people because they have to put their bodies through so much.

“Sending a girl to college is like pouring water in your shoes” (56)

I believe that Nathan Price has a certain opinion about women that may include that they are not intelligent or even worthy. This can reflect a lot of things about Nathan Price and the time period and setting of the book. Although Leah and Adah are said to be very intelligent girls he still feels that sending a girl to college is a waste.

“This is our permanent order: Leah, Ruth May, Rachel, Adah. Neither chronological nor alphabetical but it rarely varies, unless Ruth May gets distracted and falls out of line” (62)

This quote says a lot about the girls respectively and as a group. I also think this quote may have importance later in the book because it describes the order as permanent and to hardly ever be changed. This is also somewhat how the order of the chapters has been although Ruth May and Rachel were switched in the previous four chapters. Perhaps somehow Ruth May was distracted.

“The mote in his brother’s eye, not the sin in his own household” (66)

I’m not sure what the “mote in his brother’s eye” means. Maybe it means the lack of his fellow Christian’s judgment. In this quote you can tell that it isn’t Nathan’s fault that the bird says the words “piss off” (65) and therefore he considers it not the sin of him or his household. I wonder if Nathan Price really sees it that way, or if Leah is articulating it so as to defend her father.

“For Adah that’s normal, of course, and for that very reason she often gets accused when none of us speaks up”(66)

I find it interesting that here silence has worked against Adah. Adah justifies that “silence has many advantages” (34) and also describes speaking as a distraction. However here, silence is clearly a disadvantage. I also find it unfair that Nathan Price targets Adah just because she is usually silent.

Roles of the Price Daughters

Pages 13 to 34 of The Poisonwood Bible are the first stories from the daughters when they arrive in Africa. Each of these four chapters begins to tell the story of the Price family’s stay in the Congo. As best as I can, I have compiled what I believe the book has told us so far about each daughter’s character and the role they might play in the book.

I think that Leah is going to be a very active character in the book. She has a tremendous amount of faith in her father and his mission and that her own “Mother failed to grasp our mission” (13). I think that she will follow and act in her fathers mission as well as either encourage the others to do the same or scorn them when they do not. Hopefully along the way she will find more of her identity instead of always following her father. We already know that She likes nature, expecting to see “jungle flowers, wild roaring beasts. God’s Kingdom in its pure, unenlightened glory” in Africa.

Ruth May is very honest. I think that she can tell to some extent what she feels is good and bad. She’s very honest in admitting that “Ham was the youngest one, like me, and was bad. Sometimes [she] [is] bad too” (20). I think that she will give an honest unbiased perspective to the events going on in the The Poisonwood Bible. Also, maybe she will help to bring love in the hard times the family might have because she “hate[s] the Devil, and love[s] everybody else” (21)

When they arrive in the Congo, Rachel seems reluctant and unwilling, always saying “man oh man are we in for it now” (22), or “Lordy!” (22). Therefore I think that Rachel will give us a perspective on the life style and conditions in the Congo as well as the significant differences between Georgia and where they are in the Congo now. She is always thinking of more things they should have brought and wishes that she had “stuffed in [her] purse those five-day deodorant pads” (22). Rachel hasn’t shown any leadership related qualities, so I’m guessing that her role in the story will be different from that of most eldest siblings.

Adah always refers to her father as “Our Father”, and I wonder if she connects her father with God somehow. It is interesting to see the way her mind works. I think that her presence in the book will give us an insight to what life would be like as a physically different person in the time period and setting of the book. Maybe she will be able to relate to the Congolese people in a way that the others won’t because she also does not look like her family members. She knows that “Leah, and [her] are identical in theory, just as in theory we are all made in God’s image”, which may extend to the Congolese people as well.

Essential Question Cycle 17 Response 1

I’m mostly answering my personal essential question in my journal. However, now and then I’ll post one on my blog in addition to in my journal for various reasons. My essential question is “What is human immortality, and does it have any significance?”

Yesterday, I was trying to do my homework, but unfortunately got distracted. Actually, I got distracted several times, but this time it was by Garage Band, an application that let’s you write your own music. I started writing this little splurge thing until I decided that I should really finish my homework. But, before I could start working, I got distracted again, this time fortunately. Listening to my nameless splurge, I began to think about what I had just written. If I hadn’t gotten distracted, then the thing that I had just created wouldn’t even exist today. However, that’s not a big deal because no one even cares if it exists or not, frankly, not even me. But what about other songs and their existence? I wonder what the world would be like if Beethoven’s fifth didn’t exist today, or if all of Elvis Preseley’s work no longer existed. But is doesn’t only apply to music, it could apply to anything. What would the world be like without Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa? There is no doubt that the world would be a different place.

The following made me conclude that there are indeed certain things that humans hold onto long after the creator is gone. I would also have to say that it does hold some significance to our lives because our society would be very different without these works. These creators to some extent are immortal. Their names will forever hold meaning in our society and will be associated with their work as well as the lives they led and the people they were. The question that bothers me now is whether this significance is really important. Significance by definition refers to importance, but does the significance hold a greater importance? The world would keep turning and humans would keep living if all of Da Vinci’s work was somehow destroyed and eventually forgotten. If we forget a historical being, we forget about our culture and our past, but are there greater reasons to remember? I’m still boggled to whether human immortality is highly significant or not.

Response to Genesis 1:28

For English we are starting to read Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible. The first of the seven books within the The Poisonwood Bible begins on page one and refers to Genesis 1:28 from the Holy Bible

And God said to them,
Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth,
And subdue it: and have dominion
Over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air,
And over every living thing that moveth upon the earth

My first response was that God must have really wanted humans to think that they were somehow superior to the other creatures and that they had higher power over the earth. The phrase that really caught me was “subdue it”. Here I thought that God was really telling them to use and enforce their power over the earth to gain power and establish their higher ranking in the world. The word “subdue” made me think of the word “submerge”. This made me imagine humans submerging everything else on the earth under some defining level. The phrase “subdue it” leads to the logical next phrase “and have dominion”, which just justifies them establishing their higher ranking in the world. The rest of the quote, I felt, was just an elaboration on that main idea.

The beginning of the quote just has God telling humans to grow and prosper as a race. So while reading, I didn’t think too much of it. The phrase “replenish the earth” was what gave me a hard time and forced me to think about its meaning after reading the whole quote. I had a hard time with it because I kept wondering: to replenish the earth, wouldn’t it have had to been full and then empty? The bible never talks about the earth ever becoming empty before Genesis, it just starts out empty, and then God fills it. I came to the conclusion that God had assumed that humans, after having established their power over the earth, would then execute according to their power and use the resources of the earth for their own means. Because God makes this assumption, he gives humans the responsibility to give back, to take care, and to replenish the earth after doing so.

I context to the The Poisonwood Bible, I would have to infer a number of things. Because I know that Price family is a very religious family having an evangelical Baptist as a father and husband, the book may be about how the Price family lives in response to the message God has sent them through this passage of Genesis. As a human myself, God has put me in a superior position over other, has given me guidelines and permissions for me to interpret into my behavior, as well as responsibilities for the world and other life forms. I believe that the Price family also felt various indications of how to live that God places on them in this passage. The book could be about how they respond to these indications in the way they live. It could also be about how they interpret God’s message or how they find they have misinterpreted it, or if they learn to interpret it differently. It could be about how they treat others, not necessarily plants, animals and resources of the world but other people as well.

World Morals?

For cycle sixteen, four morally contemplative questions were posed. The following is a response to one of them.

Are morals and values so different from country to country, person to person, that there can be no common values? Do you think there should be some universal common values? If so, what do you think they should be? If not, why not?

To me, a moral or a value is a very meaningful piece of advice that can be used in many situations. People get their morals and values just by living. For example, an important lesson learned through experience, advice from a trustworthy person, or a slowly acquired state of mind can all become morals. If these instances help us to gain knowledge of what we feel is right and what is wrong, then they become our morals or values.

In response to my definition of a moral or a value, I’d have to conclude that yes, everyone’s morals and values are different in the world. Because everyone is exposed to different experiences, everyone has different morals and values. It is only a guided coincidence that those who live in the same parts of the world will be exposed to similar experiences and therefore will have higher chances of having similar morals.

In Peter Singer’s “The Singer Solution to World Poverty”, he mainly addresses American’s, asking his heavily American audience “what is the ethical distinction between a Brazillian who sells a homeless child to organ peddlers and an American who already has a TV and upgrades to a better one—knowing that the money could be donated to an organization that would use it to save the lives of kids in need?” I believe that Singer is morally challenging Americans because in general, they might have more to give, but that doesn’t mean that their morality is greater, lesser, or even different from those from other places of the world.

There are underlying feelings like guilt and righteousness that help us infer right from wrong based on what’s around us. So while morals come in all different shapes and sizes, their shared goal of valuing right over wrong make them all very similar. There are common values because human nature values common things. Just like how a Brazilian, a Swede, and an Australian would all value drinking water, their life, and even a television, they would all value self-respect, loyalty, and humility. People know for the most part a good thing when they see it. They’ll value it no matter where they are in the world.

I also believe that there are common goods. Because, people from all over can appreciate value in the same certain things, I also believe that many people around the world believe that as a whole, certain things are good for the world from any stand point. For example, the end of world poverty would be one. I believe that many people around the world feel that it is morally correct for some reason or another, or in some way or another, to try to contribute to this common good. This is why I think Singer addresses the fact that “the United States Government is not going to meet even the very modest United Nations-recommended target of 0.7 percent of gross national product; at the moment it lags far below that, at 0.09 percent, not even half of Japan's 0.22 percent or a tenth of Denmark's 0.97 percent”.

I don’t think that there should be universal values. To have universal values would be to tell everyone what to believe. I have faith in humans no matter where they are or who they are. I have faith that they’ll find morals of their own to guide them and help them do what they feel is right. Because I have this faith in people I don’t even know, I don’t feel like I have to have common morals with them just so that we can understand each other, or accept each other. In terms of values and morals, I feel that if we respect each other’s morals we can all live by what we believe while still living peacefully with others.

People may think that universal values will end wars, but I don’t. Morals don’t start wars because morals strive to help people make righteous decisions. Sure values are different around the world, from person to person, from religion to religion, Christianity may stress faith in the divine, Confucianism may stress caring human relationships, and Shintoism may stress wholeness with nature, but these are all peaceful benevolent morals. People go to war for their family, for their pride, for their country, for the sake of their religion, for knowledge, and so forth because people fight for what they have to protect. People don’t fight for morals because they can’t be lost and they can’t be proven. They are embedded within our consciences and each individual has the decision everyday, to live by their morals, to discard their morals or to change their morals. Others can have an influence on these decisions, but the decision itself is ultimately the individuals.

The Quintessential Meal

Something of highest quality and importance to a person or on a person's way of living can be described as quintessential. When I thought of something that is quintessential to my life, I concluded that breakfast is the quintessential meal of my day. Sure, it happens to be at a time when we aren’t that hungry and can easily skip eating, but the importance of breakfast lies deeper within its core. Breakfast wakes you up and keeps you going. It is truly an amazing meal.

The great thing about breakfast is that there are a wide of choices you have. You can easily have a very healthy breakfast if you eat cereal, oatmeal, yogurt, fruits and other health items without the person next to asking, “that’s all your eating?” which he would’ve asked had you been eating just a salad for dinner. If you have a sweet tooth you can eat pancakes, french-toast, or waffles. Similarly, if you crave protein you can have bacon, eggs, or sausages. The choices are endless at the breakfast table.

Breakfast is an important part of everyone’s nutritional diet. Your body, including your brain gets its energy from glucose. Your body runs for ten to twelve hours without any food intake from super to when you wake up. As your glucose levels drop, “your body compensates by releasing the glucose that has been stored in your muscle tissue and liver, called glycogen. Once all of the energy from the glycogen stores is used up, the body breaks down fatty acids to produce energy”.

Waking up to a nice breakfast can even help those who are watching their weight. Eating breakfast can help to quicken the metabolism. When breakfast isn’t eaten,
“excess kilojoules [“a unit equivalent to 0.239 nutritional calories” (www.dictionary.com)] eaten during one sitting are stored as body fat, once the glycogen storage areas are full. People who skip breakfast are usually ravenous by lunchtime and tend to eat more to compensate”.

Breakfast is a fulfilling part of life. Research from Australia proves that “children who eat an inadequate breakfast are more likely to make poor food choices for the rest of the day and in the long term”. In addition, “skipping breakfast can diminish mental performance”. Therefore having breakfast as a part of your day now, can help you in the future.

Family meals are also important to the wellbeing and stability of a family and it’s individuals. While most families eat together at dinner, breakfast can be a great meal to share. After having to wake up early in the morning, families can feed off of each other’s energy making them emotionally and mentally ready for the day ahead.

As you can see, breakfast is the most important meal. I would never go a day without it. It gives me something to wake up for, something to look forward to. It gives me the boost of energy I need makes me feel like I started my day doing something right. Sure, we all look forward to lunch to take a break from our busy lives and help tie us to the end of the day. Dinner is nice as well and is very relaxing and enjoyable at the end of the day. However breakfast’s purpose is true, as it helps us all lead better lives.

See the

Interview

Peter Singer, a utilitarian philosopher wrote the article The Singer Solution to World Poverty . In response to his article I asked Anna, a fellow classmate of mine a few questions on what she thought about Singer’s article. The interview is as follows:

T: Though Singer has great faith for his solution to world poverty, he accepts that “that we are unlikely to see, in the near or even medium-term future, a world in which it is normal for wealthy Americans to give the bulk of their wealth to strangers”. Do you think that people will live by Singer’s solution in the near or distant future?

A: No, that is unreasonable because not everyone will believe in one man’s solution to world poverty. There are also people who don’t have 30,000 dollars who would not be able to donate anything. Singer has an unreasonable expectation. When I talk to you or my parents or anyone in the general public I don’t see that much happening so I can’t see such a drastic change happening in the future. It’s not human nature to give that much away so I don’t think it will happen. Especially because the problems are so far away so you won’t be able to relate personally to the situation at hand. Therefore you probably won’t be as compassionate to the people you don’t know so people are less likely to donate.

T: Singer’s entire article tells us what we have to do to be morally decent people as well as what we have to do to improve the world by solving the problem of world poverty. Do you think that poverty is the biggest issue in the world today?

A: I don’t know if it is the biggest issue. However I do feel that is a very big issue because so many problems stem from world poverty such as separation, wars, and hunger. Because of world poverty people don’t have resources to be self-sufficient and their situations becomes worse and worse.

T: Singer compels his readers to consider how the money they are spending on everyday luxuries could be used to help the less fortunate. The apparent lack of willingness from Americans to donate the majority of their savings to oversea organizations drives Singer to ask us to “at least know that we are failing to live a morally decent life”. How did you react to his accusation?

A: I didn’t agree with him. I also don’t judge him on it because that’s what he believes is a morally decent life. My definition of a morally decent life is just different from his. Everyone has a different definition of what a morally decent life is and shouldn’t be judged by that. Everyone has different reasons on why they believe what they believe is morally decent. His standards aren’t more important as anyone else’s so I don’t feel that offended.


T: Using a story from Peter Unger’s book Living High and Letting Die, Singer draws the conclusion that an American that fails to donate most of his savings to help people that would other wise die are the same as Bob, a middle-aged man who saves his Bughatti at the cost of a child’s life. He asks us to realize that “when Bob first grasped the dilemma that faced him as he stood by that railway switch, he must have thought how extraordinarily unlucky he was to be placed in a situation in which he must choose between the life of an innocent child and the sacrifice of most of his savings. But he was not unlucky at all. We are all in that situation.” Have you felt like you were in Bob’s situation because you weren’t doing as much as possible to help the less fortunate?

A: No, I have never felt exactly in that situation. On the other hand, when I analyze it more thoroughly I can see how I am constantly making choices to not help people, like how Bob didn’t decide to flip the switch. We both didn’t choose to hurt anyone, but also didn’t choose to help anyone. Bob’s situation however gave him a more direct influence on the life or death of the child while my situation gives me a more indirect influence on the lives I could be saving.

T: As part of his solution, Singer describes how he reaches the exact amounts everyone should donate. He rationalizes that “An American household with an income of $50,000 spends around $30,000 annually on necessities, according to the Conference Board, a nonprofit economic research organization. Therefore, for a household bringing in $50,000 a year, donations to help the world's poor should be as close as possible to $20,000. The $30,000 required for necessities holds for higher incomes as well. So a household making $100,000 could cut a yearly check for $70,000. Again, the formula is simple: whatever money you're spending on luxuries, not necessities, should be given away”. Are there other ways than Singer’s solution that can solve the problem of world poverty?

A: There are more reasonable sacrifices. It depends on how much that person cares, and how much that person has to give. You can really make a difference using your time, energy and resources other than financial. Everyone can help solve the problem of world poverty by doing two things, taking social action and advocating for whatever they want to happen. If everyone followed singer’s solution and did nothing else, charities wouldn’t stand for anything; they would just be dead charities with money. But if everyone advocates and speaks out in the community it will make a bigger difference. If you donate less than all your savings excluding the 30,000 for necessities, fly over to wherever the problem is and becoming and active part of the solution. Philanthropy isn’t the only solution, time and energy are more important than money.