“I took a breath and told myself that a woman anywhere on earth could understand another woman on market day. Yet in my eye could not decipher those vendors: they wrapped their heads in bright-colored cloths as cheerful as a party, but faced the world with permanent frowns. However I might pretend I was their neighbor, they knew better. I was pale and wide-eyed as a fish. A fish in the dust of the marketplace, trying to swim, while all the other women calmly breathed in that atmosphere of overripe fruit, dried sweat, and spices, infusing their lives with powers I fear.“ The beginning of Revelations begins with Orleanna reminiscing on memories from Africa. As Orleanna thinks back on market day, she remembers how peculiar she appeared throughout the woman of Africa. Not only did the “bright-colored clothes” differ between Orleanna and the Congolese women, but also the personalities and feelings. Just as Orleanna was feeling like the family may have a chance at fitting in, Leah trips “mid-straddle over the oranges” and the oranges go everywhere. After the incidence happens, Orleanna realizes how much the family does not fit in with the Africans, as Orleanna discovers that she is only “[her] husband’s wife” and “nothing more” as Nathan has a control on everything the Price family does.
As one reads the story, thoughts of what Orleanna’s life would be like if she hadn’t had married Nathan begins to arise not only for the reader, but soon for Orleanna herself. When Orleanna wakes up each morning in the Congo, she remembers how the mornings were the worst, as Orleanna had to face another day with her husband and children, and the “litany of efforts it took to push a husband and children alive and feed through each day.” Coffee was of far more importance than “the physical presence of [her] husband.” The river symbolized a way out for Orleanna. Each day she “dream[ed] of how it might have carried [her] body down through all the glittering sandbars to the sea” away from responsibility and, more distinctively, the family which bears a burden and a husband that Orleanna doesn’t wish to be with. The “magazine pictures” that Orleanna has hanging up in the kitchen also symbolize the dismay she feels towards the children and Nathan, as each picture poses a scene that “father would disapprove” of as the pictures gleam faces of “housewives, children, and handsome men from cigarette ads” which “are company for her” in the dreams Orleanna has of living a different life.
Each girl masquerades a different view on not only the Congolese, but religion itself. Mama Tataba refers to the girls as “fufu nsala” which means “forest-dwelling, red-headed rat that runs from light.” The comparison Mama Tataba instills upon the girls is ideally correct, as each girl secludes herself in the forest, unwilling to understand the Congolese culture and find the “light” to guide each girl to happiness in the Congo. “Adah chose her own exile; Rachel was dying for the normal life of slumber parties and record albums she was missing. And poor Leah. Leah followed [her father] like an underpaid waitress hoping for the tip.”
Rachel, the eldest of the girls, is stuck on material items and vanity. Watching women work in the community has no effect upon Rachel. Mama Tataba could accomplish many tasks in the Congo with ease, as she could “reach her fingers deep in a moldy bag, and draw out a miraculous ounce of white flour. She rendered goat fat into something like butter, and pulverized antelope mean into hamburgers. She used a flat rock and the force of her will to smash groundnuts into passable peanut butter.” All the while Mama Tataba was laboring over food for the Prices, Rachel sat “at the foot of the table” ungrateful as she “tossed her hair from shoulders, announcing that all she wished for in this world was ‘Jiffy, smooth. Not crunchy.’”
Later on when Rachel sees Antatole’s “wrinkled brown knuckles and pinkish palms” Rachel begins imagining “hands like those digging diamonds out of the Congo dirt” and wondering if “Marilyn Monroe even [knew] where they came from.” Rachel pictured Marilyn in “her satin gown and a Congolese diamond digger in the same universe” which gave her “the weebie jeebies.” Even though Rachel has lived in the Congo for quite some time, she still cannot fathom “normal” people and the Congolese people residing in the same area and also belonging together. Rachel is stuck on herself, and the spoiled girl she was back home. Will Rachel ever be able to step out of herself and come at peace with the Congo culture?
Leah is the opposite of Rachel, as Leah is concentrated more upon obtaining her father’s approval and love than anything else. Leah discovers that that Tata Boanda “has two wives”, therefore making him a “sinner.” Leah is taken aback at the fact that Tata Boanda comes into the church with his two wives, but what Leah oversees is the culture of the Congolese. Leah is concentrated on her own religion because it’s all she’s ever been taught by her father, that Leah fails to comprehend what the Congolese believe, and ultimately classifies them as sinners.
After Nathan hits Leah, Leah is afraid that she won’t be her father’s favorite anymore. So with all Leah does from then on, she tries “twice as hard to win him back over.” Is Leah as religious as she appears to be, or does she just pretend to live in the Lord’s ways to win over her father’s love?
Leah’s twin sister, Adah, is supposedly the sister that doesn’t comprehend anything. Ironically, Adah is book smart, and the only sister that attempts to understand the Congolese people. There are certain areas in the Congo river that is divided up into three different sections for bathing, washing clothes, and obtaining drinking water. Adah is the only one out of the Price family that realizes the Price family is doing it the wrong way, therefore they have “defended the oldest divinities” and Adah soon wonders “what new, disgusting sins [they] commit each day, holding [their] heads high in sacred ignorance while the neighbors gasp, hand to mouth.” Whereas the rest of the family focuses on themselves, Adah observes every bit of nature and culture surrounding her.
Ruth May, the youngest of all the girls, facades a naïve girl. Because of the inexperience that Ruth has and carefree spirit she portrays, Ruth is the first of the girls to befriend the other children. The other girls were “flabbergasted” to see their “own little sister in the center of [their] yard, the focal point of a gleaming black arc of children strung from here to there…” Ruth didn’t see a problem with the Congolese people, and in all her boredom and isolation from the rest of the community, decided that there would be nothing wrong with playing “Mother May I” and teaching the children a new game. Although Ruth is the youngest, she is able to be the most civilized one out of the family when it came to being kind to the Congolese and non judgmental.
Even though Nathan Price disrespects the Congolese beliefs and Tata Kuvudundu by calling him a “witch doctor” because he’s trying to get the Congolese to believe in different ideas than Nathan agrees with, one has to give the Price family credit for being stubborn in their religious ways even though many people in the African community were against the family’s religion.
While the family believes that the way the Congolese dress, act, and believe are strange, the family fails to see how peculiar they look to the Africans when the Price’s do simple tasks such as “walk around in [their] house, speak, wear pants, and boil water.” The game that Ruth taught the Congo kids was different than the games that the Congolese kids normally play. “Mother May I and Hide and Seek” were a “wide world of difference” than “Find Food, Recognize Poisonwood, and Build a House.” The girls’ games are all about fun, whereas the Congolese children’s games are about chores. Not only are games different, but religious beliefs differ. When the Price family disagrees with what someone in the community has to say, the family banishes them from the family’s house—once again secluding themselves into a house “without any outside distractions.” When the Price family discovers that someone may not be as religious as them, rather than accepting the beliefs of that person, they isolate themselves in a house as they wither away with the family’s own beliefs.
Towards the end of Revelations, the Price family discovers that the Congo is now going to be a free country, and the Price’s are supposed to pack up their belongings and leave. Even though Orleanna, Rachel, Leah, Adah, and Ruth all wish to leave, Nathan refuses the family to go. Methuselah, the bird that the family attempted to set free but kept on coming back, dies at the end of the chapter when the family finds out about Congo becoming free. Methuselah symbolizes the people of Congo. When Nathan freed Methuselah from his cage, Methuselah kept on returning to the family for food, because the bird couldn’t survive on his own. Methuselah is found dead at the end of the chapter, and all that was found was “feathers without the ball of Hope inside” symbolizing how the Congolese people cannot survive on their own. Will the fate of the Congolese end up like Methuselah, or will the Price family step up and help the people of Congo?
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