Character Analysis
Gifts from Reverend Santa
The man the Prices took over the mission in Kilanga from, Brother Fowles, is a kind, compassionate foil to Nathan Price's fire and brimstone Southern Baptist preacher. Fowles and Price couldn't be more different. Fowles is a Yankee, Irish, and Catholic, and is called everything from Mr. Bird to Reverend Santa by the people of Kilanga and Rachel.
Brother Fowles only appears significantly in one chapter, just long enough to teach the Price family (well, except for stubborn Nathan) some important lessons about compassion and what it takes to live in the Congo. (That would be understanding and friendship.) He says it best when he says, "You do not support the root, the root supports you" (3.8.52). In the Congo, the Fowles family has way more than they need—not because they swindled it out of people, like Eeben Axelroot does; or demanded it, the way Nathan Price would like to do; but because people willingly and happily gave them hard-earned supplies.