Right from the start of the Poisonwood bible which was written by Barbara Kingsolver, we can see that the character of Ruth May, who is the youngest the four Prices is very simple, sweet and most of all innocent. Unfortunately tragedy strikes at the end of the Bel and the Serpent, which is the fourth book. Ruth May dies from a green mamba snakebite. Once Ruth May dies, innocence is lost in the Price family and their situation deteriorates from there. In order to see why innocence was lost after her death we must first of all look at what made her innocent, then we can look at how innocence was lost once she dies.
First of all, what makes Ruth May innocent? For starters Ruth May is a child, even more so she is the youngest child, at the start of the book she is only 5 and at this age she is only just starting to understand the world around her and to move further away from her parents. As she moved to the Congo she was starting to see the world through her own eyes. This meant that she hadn’t been affected by the American ideology of the Congo and the people from Congo. This allowed her to see people for who they really were inside and not for their looks or skin colour. An example of this is when she is the first member of the price family to make contact with the villagers. This encounter happens while Leah was watching after her and she says, “Ruth May was the first among us to get her way” “who would have thought a five-year-old could establish communications with the Congolese?” (pg 120) This shows how innocent her soul was and how she didn’t have any hate or judgement towards the Congolese. You could also say that Ruth May’s soul wasn’t “innocent” as “she wasn’t baptised yet” (pg 419) so she wouldn’t have looked and thought through the eyes of God or be totally influenced by him as she still did things that she knew were wrong in his eyes such as looking at Nelson.
Not only does her being young and sweet show that she is innocent, we can also see it...