Breath, Eyes, Memory

Sophie is the main character in the book Breath, Eyes, Memory. Her mother gave birth to her after being raped and beaten by an unknown man, so Sophie, and her mother, never know who this man is. Sophie spent the first 8 or 9 years being raised by her aunt in Haiti while her mother lived in New York. Because of this, Sophie doesn't meet her mother until she moves to New York to live with her mother. As Sophie grows older she begins to notice the neighbor next door that she eventually falls in love with and marries.
This man is older and is a traveling musician. This is one of the obstacles that Sophie needs to go through because of her mother's initial reaction to this. Her mother doesn't immediately approve because of his age and his occupation. Sophie's mother wanted her to grow up to be a doctor and to marry a man with a stable job that can help provide for the family. Eventually her mother comes to terms with the marriage and is ok with it. Sophie and her husband have a daughter together that travels with Sophie when she went to Haiti.
The trip to Haiti was a part of something else that Sophie had to deal with personally. As a teenager her mother would come home and test Sophie to see if she was still a virgin. Sophie hated these tests alot, she hated them enough to make herself intentionally wihtout actually losing her virginity. She felt that if she were to fail one of these tests her mother would stop them. These tests traumatized Sophie to the point where didn't feel 100% comfortable with her husband. She evntually began attending a help group with other people who were sexually traumatized. This was another step she took towards dealing with and getting over the problem.
Another obstacle Sophie needed to face was dealing with her mother's pregnancy. It didn't affect her directly, but it affected her mother greatly. Her mother suffered from nightmares which caused her to toss and turn in bed violently. When Sophie first moved in with her mother, she would have to wake her mother up whenever the nightmares happened. Her mother didn't want the child and for a while she was contemplating getting rid of it. Getting rid of the child was something her mother eventually did, but it ended up costing her her life.

The Poisonwood Bible

In The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver using multiple characters to narrate the story. I found this to be really interesting and it's definitely a technique I like. I feel that she did a good job writing the book the way she did.

I can see why authors use this tool. You can a different perspective on certain things, like how in any argument there are always different sides. When you're speaking to eyewitnesses to a crime there is always a different version of what happened, and once you've taken all the sides and put them together, you can see the picture as a whole. I've always enjoyed films and television shows that use this technique. One of my favorite shows called Boomtown did this exactly. They'd take an event and show it through the eyes of a politician, a cop, a news reporter, and a paramedic, all in the city of Los Angeles. Pulp Fiction is almost like this, except it emphasises more on the order in which events are shown. But you still see things through the different characters, and at the end it all ties up and makes more sense.

I like the way it's done in this story because each character has such a strong personality. Each character has their own opinion on things and interesting to hear the story through each of their distinct voices. My favorite two characters in this book are Adah and Ruth May. I feel that they have the most unique voices in the story. Adah is very poetic and sees things through a different light. I find reading her passages the most interesting because of her voice. The way she speaks is so interesting to me, especially her use of palindromes. I like reading Ruth May's passages because of how young she is, and the way she sees things. I also like how the author intentionally phrases things incorrectly because it's how a 5 year old would say something. It allows us to feel five and naive again; it's almost a reminder of how we were when we were younger. It helps that Ruth May has such a live personality; it seems like shes always doing something. Kingsolver really does a great job at being consistent in writing in the characters' voice.

In conclusion, I feel that telling the story through several voices is a great to tool to use to tell a story. It gives the characters more life, and it makes the seems so much more real. They have unique personalities which are drawn well with the book being written this way. It allows myself to get attached to the characters I like easier. They are all their own person, and that is strongly shown when they're given multiple passages to speak to you. It's a smart and very useful tool that helps us understand the characters better and to get different views on certain topics that they all share as a family in a foreign land.