ESSAY #1

Jacob Fowler

Period 5

Orleanna's Exile

   To be utterly alone is the most frightening and unnerving idea that one can comprehend; ever since the Mesopotamians decided to settle on the Euphrates, we as a species have done everything in our power to stay in communities. This being said, after a long day, everyone has let out an exasperated sigh and just begged for isolation and some time for peace. To paraphrase Edward Said, and boil his statement down to one sentence, we love romanticize isolation but deep down we all fear it. Orleanna Price had never been alone in her life, yet all she longed for was the feeling of independence. She tried to find peace in a foreign land, and even halfway across the world she never left what she was trying to leave behind, when she finally did find exile, it was both the most alienating event of her life, and the first time she was actually free.

            The guilt that Orleanna felt for leaving her husband and letting her daughter die decimated her soul and made her character so much more sympathetic. Orleanna had never been alone for her entire life and she ventured out in the jungle of the Congo to flee from her husband. After her exodus, she found herself separated from her children, gone from her home, her last concept of comfort left her mind as she walked out that door, and she realized that maybe her home and her self were very different things, that maybe she was not Mrs. Price and for the first time in her married life was Orleanna. Her guilt and freedom wrestled each other for the rest of her lives, but she took a leap of faith, she accomplished what so many of romanticize and faced the consequences like the strong woman that she truly was.

Ever since childhood, Orleanna Price has been told what to do, how to do it, where, when, but never why, because she never asked, Orleanna never questioned her circumstance. She fell in love with a red haired, audacious preacher and decided that she would never want to be alone again and she would never have to be. A couple decades and a few children later, Orleanna knew this was not what God intended marriage to be, this was a problem so severe not even a missionary trip to the Congo could mend her heart and quench her thirst for separation. Mrs. Price never felt homesick because she never left what she really wanted to be away from because he shared a bed with her. When Ruth May died and she had no choice but to flee from Nathan she was finally free, she had made it, she was finally Orleanna, she was no longer Mrs. Price, she was her own. Although guilt cursed her every thought for the rest of her life, she was more free in exile than she could ever be in her loveless marriage.

 Orleanna's exile was the hardest, most agonizing thing she ever did in her adult life, however ultimately she found the freedom she searched for, although it was not pure and it was not perfect, she found comfort in isolation. Mrs. Price had to see her youngest daughter die to be able to escape what she longed to flee for years, and although that horrible tragedy occurred, Orleanna was finally able to be alive, to be free, and although guilt followed her until she died, Orleanna was free in her own self.