The Poisonwood Bible

Rachel, at age fifty, reflects on her life. She misses the comforts of America, but she has not returned, partly out of concern that the Equatorial would be taken apart in her absence. In hindsight, she admits that she should have left Africa right away when she first had the chance but did not do so because it had irrevocably changed her. She knew she would not fit in with her peers in Bethlehem, Georgia, who would have no way of understanding the horrors she survived. Rachel remains proud of her life and most of the choices that she has made, particularly her glamorous time as the wife of a dignitary, but she regrets being unable to have children as a result of an infection she acquired from Mr. Axelroot.

She muses that Africa cannot be changed, but that one simply cannot let it affect one’s thought process. She recommends putting any unpleasantness that does not directly affect one out of one’s mind and doing whatever one must to survive, regardless of whether the action is un-Christian: “This is darkest Africa, where life roars by you like a flood and you grab whatever looks like it will hold you up” (517).