Leah Price

Character Analysis

Daughter of a Preacher Man

Out of all Nathan Price's daughters, Leah changes the most... and the least. When she first comes to the Congo, at age fourteen and a half, she's the type of girl who wants to be daddy's favorite and still refers to her age as "and a half." She's about two steps away from putting on a white dress and a Promise Ring.

Boy, does the Congo make a person grow up fast.

Early on, Leah spends a lot of time following in her father's footsteps. Even though he never looks at her, and always seems to be talking to an imaginary congregation instead of directly to his daughter, she does all she can to try and impress him. Remind you of anything? If you ask us, Leah's relationship with her father is like a relationship with God. She looks up to Him, worships Him, but… he never talks back. So it makes sense that, when she loses her relationship with her father, she also loses her relationship with God.

With that relationship kaput, she turns to Anatole and to Africa… and we kind of saw it coming. Early on, Leah says, "Someday perhaps I shall demonstrate to all of Africa how to grow crops" (1.5.13), which—surprise!—is exactly what she tries to do when, as an adult, she and Anatole form a farming community. (Too bad she's about as successful at it as her father was at converting the Congolese to Christianity.)

Wearing the Pants in the Family

It takes Leah a while to realize that she can do things. Anything, really. Her childhood has been dictated by her father, a man who forbids women to do anything and then gets mad that the women in his life don't do anything. We hate to say it, but when Leah finds out that "Leá is the Kikongo word for nothing much" (3.1.12), we have to agree with them.

Still, once Anatole and Nelson start teaching her how to hunt, she starts living up to her potential. Unfortunately, her defying of gender norms goes over about as well with the Congolese as it does with her dad: they call her bákala, which "covers quite a lot of ground, including a hot pepper, a bumpy sort of potato, and the male sexual organ" (3.14.9). (It's all about context, Shmoopers.)

It still takes Leah a while to realize she can learn things on her own, without a man teaching her. It isn't until the Price family exodus that she tries to carry something on her head: "In all our time in the Congo I'd been awestruck by what the ladies could carry [on their heads] but had never once tried it myself. What a revelation, that I could carry my own parcel like any woman here!" (5.1.4).

How ironic: it takes acting like a woman to realize that she doesn't need a man.

It's Not History, It's Her-Story... Or Is It?

One last thing. Leah also observes, as a child, that in their garden, "The pumpkin vines also took on the personality of jungle plants" (1.9.2). Like a pumpkin vine, Leah, too, took on the personality of the jungle. She sees it as something that she's part of; instead of ignoring it or trying to control it, she can only try to care for it.

She'd always been this way, the girl who says, "I want to live the right way and be redeemed." (3.21.29). Anatole has a nice name for her: béene-béene, which means "as true as the truth can be" (3.15.104). In the end, nothing really changes for her. She's the same person, she just believes in something different. She believes in the world and in Africa, instead of in God. And it looks like she might have just transferred her daddy issues, too. Look at her relationship with Anatole: Leah loves Anatole. Anatole loves Leah—we guess. He never says it, and he forbids Leah to say it to him.

You can read more about Anatole in his "Character Analysis," but we have to ask—did Leah just trade in her father for a different man, or is she finally living for herself?