Choose a passage that contains striking imagery. Analyze the passage and explain the effect on the work as a whole. .
"I reached out and clung for life with my good left hand like a claw, grasping at moving legs to raise myself from the dirt. Desperate to save myself in a river of people saving themselves. And if they chanced to look down and see me struggling underneath them, they saw that even the crooked girl believed her own life was precious" (306).
Kingsolver creates an image of a swarm of people desperately tossing aside each other to save their own lives. She depicts Adah as being tenacious and determined by using terms that show desperation and struggle such as "claw", "grasp", and "clung". Kingsolver describes the mob as a "river of people" which connotes a harsh torrent that sweeps people down its path and serves to pronounce Adah's situation as one of great intensity. Throughout Adah's life, she has always been a bystander and acted as if nothing ever affected her. This has been sufficient until now because she has never been confronted by any clear and present danger due to her disability which allows her to keep from interacting with other people. For the first time, Adah is being directly affected by an event and she must choose whether to calmly accept her fate as she has done all her life, or to take an active role and fight for her life. As shown by the passage above, Adah chooses the latter option and progresses into a state of desperation which will be her first step in taking control of her life. When met with the challenge, Adah abandoned her previous beliefs and decided that her life was worth saving. This is the turning point that allows Adah to being developing her own ideals and create the tools to make it a reality.
2. Select a quote that you deem interesting or important and comment on it.
"If his decision to keep us here in the Congo wasn't right, then what else might he have been wrong about? It has opened up in my heart a sickening world doubts and possibilities, where before I had only faith in my father and love for the Lord.
