Matthew Laflin
Dr. Preston
Period 6
8/12/14
Essay 1
Change
The approach to a change in places is the key to whether a person makes the best or worst out of a foreign experience. In the book The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, the main character Nathan Price faces the risky mission that he has created. He takes his family on a mission trip to a foreign third world country from a first world country to live for a year. His approach at arriving in the Congo was wrong from the beginning which affected the entire trip compounding mistakes with mistakes. Although, there were many devastating obstacles to overcome during his endless journey he did find meaning and knowledge in it all.
In the beginning Nathan Price expected to be able to shove his religion down the native peoples throats and have them accept his beliefs. “It's frightening when things you love appear suddenly changed from what you have always known.” Here is a quote from the novel that explains most of the book. The family lived in a new place, their loved ones are split up, and deaths in the family occurred. These things all happened in result to the approach that the father, as the head of the household took when bringing his family on this mission trip. It started from the beginning when they misjudged what to bring to this small remote village. Then, it all escalated from there. When the village took a vote on if Jesus was the villages personal God and they voted no he was confused. All of the family met with the missionary that was there before them and they realized that they had been approaching the situation all wrong. The other missionary was open and general with his religion. He gave the village easy rules to follow and made everything simple. This way the village respected him and he respected the village. However the Price family did not change at all. They went about their life the same way and difficult obstacles were the result of this. The family that lived learned many new things. They learned that you can't go through life your own way or else it will affect others for the worse. For example, in order to live somewhere and be content the person first must respect the people and area they are living in. Another positive idea is to be prepared and know what you are about to get into before you do it.
Many of the family died and the rest of the family was shaken hard. Because the Price family didn't respect others culture and way of doing things harsh things happened. With all of the deaths, the rest of the family came away with an experience that will forever be locked away in their heart. In life you must learn to be okay with different things. You must be willing to live along people that do things differently. Doing things differently can have positive and negative aspects, it all depends on how you perceive it.
Well first of all I just wanted to say that it's nothing personal but I'm just going to give some friendly constructive criticism, because that's what you asked for. Starting out with your first line the wording is strange and I feel like it could've been a good opening statement if it was structured better. Plus it was kind of hard to read because it was all in white (just a note for next time). There was also a lot of reoccurring words, so try to brighten up your vocabulary. The overall introduction didn't really catch my attention it was kind of boring. On a positive note I liked the quote you used, but then you should've reworded your explanation of what that quote related too, to not sound so stiff. It would also be quite wise to proofread before you publish because there was some grammatical errors and sentences that didn't make sense. There was a lot of summarizing in your body that didn't really give me an in depth perception of your character. The conclusion was really not inspirational, so try to make it leave an impression next time.Remember this is just a friendly critique so don't be discouraged because I know if you allowed yourself more time you could've written an adequate essay.
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