Robert Alter's translation of Genesis: Chapters 3 , the Fall

Reading Robert Alter's translation, notes and commentary for Genesis 3, there are several things that strike me.

In the first lines of the chapter, Alter's translation contains a feature not found in any other translations: Eve interrupts the serpent. Verses 2-3 contain the interruption according to Alter:

"And he [the serpent] said to the woman, 'Though God said, you shall not eat from any tree of the garden-' And the woman said to the serpent, From the fruit of the garden's trees we may eat, but from the fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden God has said, 'You shall not eat from it and and you shall not touch it, lest you die.'"

This exchange as rendered by Alter is revealing of Eve. She comes across as a figure eager to display her knowledge, correcting the serpent even before he's finished. Admittedly, the serpent is stating a falsehood. Yet, in her eagerness to correct, Eve comes across as proud, wishing to display herself as more in the know than the serpent.

As with many knowledge-proud folks, she is actually wrong, or fails to remember the details of, the Lord's commands. The Lord never commands that they not touch the fruit from the tree of good and bad. Alter notes, "many commentators have observed, Eve enlarges the divine prohibition...perhaps setting herself up for transgressions: having touched the fruit and seeng no ill effect, she may proceed to eat"(n.3,p.11). It might be added, Eve claims an authority here but according to scripture was not actually present when God gave the command. The command is given at v.2:17 and Eve is created at v.2:22.

The serpent predicts that if they eat the fruit their "eyes will be opened and you will become as gods knowing good and evil"(v.3:5). Interestingly, displaying an honesty of sorts, the serpent doesn't promise they will be Gods but become 'like' gods. And, they do achieve a heightened knowledge, as predicted: "the eyes of the two were opened and they knew they were naked"(v.3:7).

Their noticing their nakedness seems to me akin to their noticing their vulnerability. This sense of vulnerability has occurred because,through their distrust of him, they've caused a fundamental schism with their creator. Evil is caused by the absence of good, of God.They've sought this out and achieved this, by separating themselves from him, by seeking something without his consent or knowing.

Their separation from God is prefigured by their separation from each other. This occurs figuratively at the end of Genesis 2. Initially, Adam and Eve are depicted as "become one flesh" at the end of v. 24. In the following verse, the beginning of v. 25, this unity has become "the two of them were naked, the human and his woman."

This separation between them continues at the outset of Genesis 3, where Eve seems apart from Adam. The text doesn't necessarily indicate that Adam is not present during the dialog between the serpent and Eve. However, he is silent; this isn't a question or debate they seem to be exploring together. Moreover, "she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave to her man, and he ate"(v.3:6). This latter sentence indicates a sequence, a time lag. They did not pick and eat together.

Elements of the story make the fall seem almost cruelly fated, a natural outcome of the story elements. Eden, the creation, seems flawed by design. At the end of Genesis 2, Adam and Eve are portrayed as "naked"(v.2:25), an aspect of their being that they will come to see as their vulnerability. The Hebrew for naked here is 'arumim and it is opposed in pun to the snake's "cunning," or in Hebrew, 'arum. Via this pun, the writer comes close to questioning God's placing Adam and Eve in their nakedness or vulnerability alongside the snake and his cunning. Moreover, as just noted, Eve's point of pride is her knowledge, yet this is precisely what the Lord's lone prohibition touches upon. In addition, the proud person most often boast of a quality or possession he fears or perceives he lacks. The person who feels or worries about being poor makes a point of displaying, trumpeting and pursuing wealth. Eve's pride in her knowledge suggests she worries or realizes it is limited, or less than perfect. In a sense, even before the fall, she has inkling of her nakedness. Now one might say such a realization doesn't preclude paradise, but one could certainly argue otherwise.

Adam is quick to blame the set-up. His argument can be found in his response to God's questioning them how they fell. Adam replies, "The woman whom you gave by me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate"(v.3:12). In other words, God's blessings intended to keep man near to God prove to do the reverse. They prove the tools of his fall. And, Adam has a point. Eve is given to Adam as a "sustainer" because God feels "it is not good for the human to be alone"(v.2:18).

After their fall, they can't look at God: "they heard the sound of the Lord God...and the human and his woman hid"(v.3:8). They don't wish to be seen by God. It is as if they've becomes aware of how poorly they fare in comparison. Prior to the fall, they existed in a hierarchical relation to their creator, in an asymmetrical relation and they were saw this and knew of it on some level. They had a sense of God, but somehow lacked a sense of themselves?

Has the fruit delivered divine vision? If it has, the ability to see themselves as God sees them hardly elicits a corresponding love. God looks on his creation in Genesis One and the sight of it prompts him to declare it "very good"(v.1:1).
After the fall, Adam and Eve have acquired some aspect of divine perception but seem far removed from seeing themselves as "very good." Of course, they are looking on themselves as "fallen," but it is hard to see how this as potential or capacity wasn't a central part of their being in that moment of the creation when God judged it "very good." Of course, vision is conditioned by other aspects of one's state. If one is good and wise, yet much less wise and much less good than another, this doesn't present a problem if one sees it within the context of a profound unity between oneself and the other. If this unity is substantially fractured, then the disparity rears it's head; the other's more perfect wisdom and virtue can't be depended on, all but essentially claimed and called one's own. We are but the holders of our own wisdom and virtue, knowing our limits and that the other knows our limits.

Robert Alter's translation of Genesis: Noah, chapter 6

The Noah story has symmetry; it's elements echo and reverse elements from the opening of Genesis. There is also a symmetry within the tale itself.

We begin with the Lord looking down on the earth and grieving over his creation: "And the Lord regretted having made the human on the earth and was grieved to the heart"(v.6). However, there was one man who was an exception, Noah. Using a focusing triplet of increasingly descriptive phrases, the narrator describes Noah as follows: he was "a righteous man, he was blameless in his time, Noah walked with God"(v.9).

Noah seems to contradict God's perception that the earth "was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted its ways on the earth." Of course, to argue too finely, while "the earth was corrupt before God," Noah who walks with God can't be before God?

In an off-beat way, what follows echoes the creation.There is a symmetry between the beginning of the present story and the opening of the text. In many cases, elements are reversed. Instead of a God-made garden to 'house' man, man himself fashions his house, building an ark. We begin with one man who begets many and now we are moving back down to one man, and his immediate family. The outward impulse marking the book heretofore, driven by the imperative to fill the earth and conquer it as well as man's fall, is now reversed with Noah gathering the world and retreating into the ark. God fashions and presents the animals to Adam. Now, the animals come to Noah, one by one, and he keeps, or preserves them. There is chaos at the beginning and in the Noah story chaos returns.

There is a reverse symmetry in the language used. At the end of Genesis 1, "God saw all that He had done, and, look, it was very good"(v.1:31). Then in Genesis 6, before presenting Noah with his intention, God "saw the earth and, look, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted tis ways on the earth"(v.12). As Alter points out, in the phrase the "waters multiplied" (v.7:17), "the very verb of proliferation employed in the Creation story for living creatures is [used for]...the instrument of their destruction"(n.17,p.33)

Within the Noah story itself, there is symmetry. This is most explicit in the numbering of days. God calls Noah to move into the ark and give him seven days (another symmetry between the Noah story and the creation story) to do so. In the seven day period God created, Noah gathers and packs that creation. Then "the rain was over the earth for forty days"(v.7:12). Then follows a "one hundred and fifty days" where "the waters surged over the earth"(v.7:24). 150 days itself is composed of a symmetry of biblically significant numbers, 70 (7x10), 10, 70(7x10). Then, after this period of 150 days of surging waters, "the ark came to rest"(v.8:4). Then, mirroring the forty days previous when "the rain was over the earth," the ark stays at rest, until "at the end of forty days, ...Noah opened the window of the ark he had made"(v.8:6). Finally, upon opening the window, Noah releases a dove who then returns having found "no resting place for its foot"(v 8:9). After seven days, Noah release the dove again and it returns with an olive leaf, convincing Noah that the "waters had abated"(v.8:12). Then there is another seven days, another release of the dove. The dove doesn't return. There is not a seven day period within the preceeding Noah story to anchor or answer this seven days. At the risk of presuming, it would appear to have it's anchor or partner in the seven days of the initial creation.

I also note that the forty days of flood begin when "the wellsprings of the great deep burst/ and the casements of the heavens were opened"(v7:11). The forty days when the ark rests end with "Noah open[ing] the window of the ark"(v8:6).

Robert Alter's Genesis translation: chapter 2

The creation story starting with the second half of 2:4 is considerably less elegant than that in Chapter 1. The creator, Yaweh, seems almost disorganized. His creation does not proceed in as orderly a manner. This is reflected in the more complex and clause laden sentence structure marking the prose in chapter two from that in chapter one. Or, as Alter puts it in note: "instead of the symmetry of parataxis, hypotaxis is initially prominent: the second account begins with elaborate syntactical subordination in a long complex sentence that uncoils [clever pun] all the way from the second part of verse 4 to the end of verse 7"(n4, p.7).

We begin at a moment where the narrator feels compelled to explain why an element of creation (no shrub...no plant) is not there (for the Lord God had not caused rain to fall....there no human to till the soil). Of course, after getting his...hands(?)...muddy, or so it would seem in "fashioning the human, humus from the soil", the Lord God planted a garden...and placed there the Human." God appears so human in this passage: fashioning from dirt, planting a garden, and then, like a child playing with dolls, placing Adam in his garden.

As indicated in the quote above, Alter does not make reference to Adam, but to "the human; he claims that the Hebrew term 'adam is "a generic term for human beings, not a proper noun"(n.26, p.5). Also, he believes that the term "does not automatically suggest maleness" but does not go so far as to agree with "Feminist critics" who contend that 'adam is to be imagined as sexually undifferentiated until the fashioning of woman"(n.27, p.5).

Adam has a reduced role in this second account of creation. He is not here to "hold sway over the fish...the fowl...the cattle...the wild beasts and all the crawling things that crawl upon the earth"(1:26). He is not directed to "fill the earth and conquer it"(1:27). Instead, more modestly, he is "set...down in the garden of Eden to till it and watch it [the Hebrew shamar; typically translated 'keep,' as it is at this point in KJV; Alter uses 'watch']"(2:15).

From this moment, the cracks in creation begin to appear. In one, God commands man to action. The Lord in two commands Man not do something. As this prohibition suggests, the possibility of doom and disaster looms over creation from the start. The Lord God no sooner gives Man the prohibition, then he begins to appear anxious, fretful. He gives Adam the command, then expresses his fear by noting that "It is not good for the human to be alone"(2:18) This musing of the Lord in 2 clearly distinguishes him from the God of chapter one: the latter always looks on the creation and sees it is good while the Lord of two looks on his creation either without comment, or, as here, looks at an aspect of it and notes "It is not good"(2:18).

The Lord in two decides Adam needs a "sustainer," Alter's somewhat clumsy translation of the Hebrew 'ezer kenegdo, which Alter claims is "a notoriously difficult" expression to translate. According to Alter, the KJV translation of the Hebrew expression as "help meet "is too weak becae it suggests a merely auxiliary function, whereas ''ezer' elsewhere connotes active intervention on behalf of someone, especially in military contexts, as often in Psalms"(n.18, p. 9). If so, Eve is intended to aid Adam in what God forsees as a battle?

The less certain hand of God in Genesis two again reveals itself in the scene where God fashions and brings each to Adam. It is not entirely clear whether God is fashioning and presenting the animals to Adam so as to furnish him with a sustainer, but that is the general impression. None of God's initial attempts at a sustainer seem to suffice. Interestingly, it is Adam who makes the call; although, he doesn't appear to be deciding to the prospective 'sustainers' presented him as much as responding, with God evaluating his response. It truly seems as if God and Adam are proceeding on an essential portion of the creation in a trial-and- error fashion.

Alter suggests that upon seeing Eve, Adam speaks; "the first human is given reported speech for the first time only when there is another human to whom to respond"(n23, p.9). This seems essentially correct. Presented with the animals prior to Eve, Adam "calls" them, and "whatever the human called a living creature, that was it's name"(v.19). In addition, upon seeing Eve, Adam does more than call. He says something and he says something in verse. Of course, his speech, his verse, is just a more elaborate naming.

Robert Alter's Genesis:chapter one.

These are observations on my reading Robert Alter's translation of Genesis.

The creation sequence in Genesis 1:1-2:4 differs so markedly from that which follows in Genesis 2:5-3:20. This first account has a sweep, an order, a procession and nobility. It seems more logical. And yet, in this account, God is more mysterious and majestic: as Robert Alter points out in a note to Gen 2:4, the God of chapter one "summon[s]things into being from a lofty distance [("hovering over the waters")] through the mere agency of divine speech"(7). Unlike the creator of the second chapter, he does not get down into the dirt and mold a man. On a more figurative level, he doesn't involve himself with man. He seems less prone to surprise, anger and regret. Of course, he seems to have less cause; everything he creates pleases him. The world he creates seems more orderly and less prone to disaster than the creation related in the second creation account.


1A-God said, Let there be light
1B-There was light
1C-God saw the light,
1D-God saw that it was good
1E-God divided light from darkness
1F-God names the light and the and the dark (day and night)

2A-God said, Let there be a vault
2B-God 'made' the vault
2C-The vault divided the water above the vault from that below
2D-God names the vault
The second day differs from the first in a number of ways. God declares but also makes. His creation performs the division of elements, or the discrimination between them. He doesn't "look" at the vault as in 1C nor proclaim it good as with 1D.

3A-God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered in one place....
3B-So it was
3C-God names the dry (Earth) and the waters (Seas)
3D-God saw that it was good
3E-God said, Let the earth grow grass..
3F-So it was
3G-And the earth put forth grass, plants...
3H-God saw that it was good.
The third day is distinctive in that it is not a single sequence, but two. Like the two previous, God voices his command/wish. Like the first day, what he voices simply seems to occur without his having to make or do anything further. In the first sequence, he names and then sees that what he's created is good. On the first day, he sees that his creation is good and then names it. On the second, he never proclaims it good. Finally, with the second sequence on day three, he sees his creation is good but does not name it.

4A-God said, let there be lights
4B-And so it was
4C-God placed them
4D-God saw that it was good
Here, God seems to act (with a physical action beyond "speaking," "seeing" and "naming." On day one he divides, on day two he makes the vault, and here he places the lights. He doesn't name here. He does see it is good. This is the third consecutive creation that concludes with his seeing it was good.

5A-God said, let the waters swarm with
5B-And God created
5C-God saw that it was good
5D-God blessed them
No naming of the creatures of the sea and sky. Again, God is furnished with a fairly active verb, although as Alter points out, it is a far more abstract verb for "making" than the verbs we will encounter in chapter 2. In addition, it is interesting to note that God's first blessing is of the wild creatures of the waters and sky.

6A-God said, let the earth bring forth living creatures of each kind,
6B-So it was
6C-And God made wild beasts of each kind and cattle...and crawling...
6D- God saw that it was good
6E-God said, Let us make a human in our image
6F-God created the human
6G-God blessed them
6H-God gives instructions
6I-And so it was
6J-God saw all that he had done
6K-And, look, it was very good.
This busiest day of creation combines nearly all the actions of the previous days, and almost every previously created element is made mention of in this account of day six. The creation of the living things of each kind is the one instance where God says, the the creation then occurs or it was, but then God takes action to make it so.

Alter's translation of line 1:31 is so beautiful. His choice of "Look" instead of the common "Behold" manages to make clear a couple of functions of this line. First, this line moves the book from the past into the present. It acknowledges the reader as a presence in the story. The narrator has seen us! The narrator shifts perspective from God in the third person looking on his creation to an invitation to the reader, to us, to join God in looking at the world. The narrative voice is beyond confident that if we position ourselves with God's perspective, we can't but see the creation as good, through and through. Of course, if this particular passage is written with knowledge of the fall, it has a sadness too it, since we can now not join God in looking at the prelapsarian world. We can only imagine this world.

Reading chapter One, my fundamental question (inspired by a sermon by Msgr Lehocky at St. Peter's in Columbia, SC) is how this account relates/or is meant to relate to the account that follows. This first one is so much more optimistic than the second account. The two don't jibe, either in tone or detail. They are clearly two different accounts of the same episode. Their juxtaposition, in all their contradiction, suggests a very different notion of book and text than our own. It is as if in this most definitive of books, the guiding hands behind it decided to place two contradicting accounts recognizing that fundamental truths can contradict. To the extent we as Christians have latched onto one account, it would seem the second one that is riven with doubt, imperfection and disaster.

Indignation by Philip Roth

Philip Roth's short and mordantly funny novel Indignation seeks an answer to a tragedy: the combat death of nineteen year-old Marcus Messner in the Korean War. Unfolding the events, the decisions and the historical climates of the last two years of his life, Roth attempts to trace out a possible chain of cause and effect leading to his death. He wants to know why this happened, and what might have happened differently. It is a search for answers fueled by indignation at young men dying in wars. Ultimately, it is a search prompted by indignation at the mystery and injustice that seems to govern the fates of men.

Marcus is the quintessential over-achiever. He is the first in a family of Kosher butchers to attend college. He begins his studies at a small college, Robert Treat, in his hometown of Newark, N.J.. When his heretofore reasonable father suddenly becomes overprotective and hectoring, Marcus flees from his home, searching to get far away, literally and figuratively, from the little urban, Jewish ghetto he grew up in. He ends up attending school at a small, liberal arts college in rural Ohio, the fictional and ironically titled Winesburg College.

At Winesburg, know-it-all, uncompromising Marcus locks horns with roommates, and is constantly on the move till he manages to secure a room unto himself. Isolated, he falls in with a rich but troubled gentile girl who is equally isolated. Although initially attracted by Olivia's sexual antics, compassionate Marcus becomes more solidly attached to her when he discovers her troubled past: a suicide attempt, alcoholism, and treatment at a hospital.

Marcus' Jewish mama eventually puts an end to the relationship. Olivia takes this poorly, has a nervous breakdown, and is expelled. And, there's a dark secret: Olivia is pregnant. Marcus discovers this when the Dean calls him into his office and questions him on the matter. Marcus and Olivia's relationship having come to his attention, the Dean believes Marcus has impregnated a troubled and emotionally disturbed girl. Having previously dealt with the rude and obstreperous Marcus on another issue, the Dean believes he has Marcus in his hands. However, although he fears expulsion as a prelude to being drafted, Marcus stands by his rights and truthfully denies having anything to do with Olivia's pregnancy. He proclaims his innocence and dares the Dean to punish him, an innocent man. To make matters worse, when the Dean suggests Marcus' version of events is not true, Marcus defiantly replies, "'Oh, fuck you it is!'"(192).

Occurring near the end of a novel heavily foreshadowed by tragedy, it's hard to believe this wont be the proverbial last straw. Certainly Marcus wont be taken at his word, certainly he will be unjustly expelled for this, and, as he's feared throughout the book, drafted and sent to Korea. Yet, his actual expulsion is occasioned by a far less glamorous and poetic misdeed. Marcus is expelled soon afterward, not for having fallen helplessly in love with a beautiful and troubled girl, but instead for the far more mundane crime of paying another student to attend a mandatory chapel in his place.

Ironies surround this misdeed. For one, Roth first has Marcus resists this misdeed as something undeserving and below him, only to have him succumb in one of his few moments of weakness. Moreover, in doing so, he follows the advice of the hypocritical, goody-two shoes, Jewish boy wonder Sonny Cottler. Marcus has contempt for Cottler, despite (or likely because of) his parents endorsement of Sonny as a model for Marcus. In a particularly cruel twist, Marcus; father warns and worries about a myriad of potential dangers, but endorses the very danger that proves deadly. Of course, Marcus hardly takes Cottler's advice in response to his father's advice. Instead, he follows it at a moment when he simply grows weary and tired of always battling the powers that be. In effect, it is his one uncharacteristic moment or decision which might be pointed to as the immediate or efficient cause of his end.

And, this straw of a misdeed doesn't have to be the last one. Despite the fact he's very likely offended and eager to punish self-righteous Marcus, the merciful Dean offers the offending Marcus an option: expulsion or a doubling of the normal mandatory chapel attendance. Yet, seemingly fated by character, Marcus can't accept such a gift. "Like the Messner that he was"(230), convinced he's done nothing wrong, hardheaded Marcus stands on right and is expelled. Shortly afterward, as feared and expected, he's drafted, sent to Korea, and meets his end in a particularly fierce battle.

I call him hard-headed and am not sure what part of that conclusion I brought to the book and what part is the result of Roth's subtle pleading. There is something to be said for Marcus and his refusal to bow. Roth's epigraph is a line from e.e. Cummings "I sing of Olaf glad and big":

Olaf (upon what once were knees)
does almost ceaselessly repeat
'There is some shit I will not eat'

Cumming's Olaf is intended as a hero. There is something heroic about Marcus. Yet, as Roth implies, Olaf the conscientious objector to war and Marcus the battler are both equally stubborn (or principled) and equally dead as a result. If this is character and principle, it doesn't seem too evolutionarily advantageous. The world in which Roth situates Marcus almost seems designed to torment and kill him.

In summary, Roth turns a caustic eye toward Marcus and his idealism. Sure, it is admirable to a point; we've all eaten shit and wondered while munching if it was necessity or simply a weakness. We've pondered the possible satisfactions of an exalted virtue, of saying no even though doing so brought wrath down upon us. But, as Roth frames it, Marcus' story ultimately points to an underlying absurdity in the world and the futility of striving, either for security or principle, in such a world. Near the end, he concludes,

"had he been able to stomach chapel and keep his mouth shut, [Marcus] would have received his undergraduate degree from Winesburg College-more likely as class valedictorian-and thus have postponed learning what his uneducated father had been trying so hard to teach him all along: of the terrible, the incomprehensible way one's most banal, accidental, even comical choices achieve the most disporportionate result,"(231).

Home as sacred space in Marilynne Robinson's Home

In several blogs, I would like to present my thoughts and reactions to Marilynne Robinson's novel Home. I loved Gilead. The two novels share the same story: the return of the black sheep Jack Boughton to his family and childhood home of Gilead, Iowa. It is a version of the prodigal son story and both novels explore issues that I'm interested in: forgiveness, redemption, repentance, and the complex dynamics of families.

Gilead is the more satisfying literary work. It is so lyrical, so eloquent, and moving. Gilead is the voice of the Reverend Ames, and the entire text is redolent with this fully realized character. It is hard to imagine that he doesn't exist. Home is a more traditional novel. Its narrative voice is more distant; although it is often a capturing of Glory's thoughts and perceptions of events, sometimes it almost takes on the traditional quality of omniscience. Home is less succinct statement. There seem to be a steady accumulation of scenes that almost becomes repetitive. It is infused with a drama that seems disproportionate for a story about a 1950's minister's family. There's an almost wearying amount of pathos, although, seeing as the characters have some responsibility for their misfortunes, perhaps what is wearying is the unrelenting tragedy of Jack and his life. Of course, the responsibility of all is under question in Home and how far folks can be blamed is a central issue. The characters are whiny at times and far less likeable than the characters in Gilead. Of course, they are the same characters. Ultimately, it seems an effort to explore in depth and breadth the issues outlined above. It feels like Robinson's last word on these subjects.

Yet, for folks who loved Gilead, for those interested in the idea and reality of forgiveness, Home is essential. In terms of the issues addressed by both novels, Gilead treads carefully; Ames is a man who is afraid to step outside of his moderation, his Christian compassion. In Gilead, he's striving to write himself to himself as a mild and loving soul and struggles against judgment and rash or dramatic action. The characters in Home are far less well-behaved and the issues that dominate both novels get a good hashing out.

So, what follows is my reaction to Robinson's second take on the story of Jack Boughton. In this blog, I wish to look at the function of home.

HOME AS RELIC/SACRED SPACE

"The house embodied all the general blessedness of his life, which was manifest, really indisputable. And which he never failed to acknowledge, especially when it stood over against any particular sorrow(1)".


The Reverend Boughton has lived in his house all his life. He has maintained the house as it was when his children were young, at a moment from the past he would preserve, when life seemed complete. And, he's preserved it to some effect. When Jack returns home after being away for 20 years, he "noticed one thing and another as if mildly startled, even affronted, by all the utter sameness...[he] put his hand on the shoulder of his mother's chair...the fringe on a lampshade, as if to confirm for himself that the uncanny persistence of half-forgotten objects...was not some trick of the mind"(52).

In a sense, this is a shrine, a church dedicated to the memory of something sacred: the Boughton family. Like a church space, it is a place of communion, of the type of shared consciousness and memory that ideally marks a family. As Glory put it, "There on the immutable terrain of their childhood her brothers and sisters could and did remember those years in great detail, their own memories, but more often the pooled memory they saw no special need to portion out among them"(8).

The dining room where they ate innumerable Sunday dinners is rendered with traces evoking sacred spaces. It is a "place of solemn and perpetual evening, [where] every family joy had been given its occasion"(40). Yet, it is dedicated to a certain experience; by reproducing the place of that experience, it aims to make always available a reproduction of that experience. All members bring themselves and their lives here to bask in the glow of their families love, a love that is an echo and precursor of the love of God. An almost heavenly comfort and ease is intended. Glory speculates "her father must have meant to preserve all this memory, this sheer power of sameness, so that when they came home, or when Jack came home, there would be no need to say anything. In the terms of the place, they would all always have known everything"(88).

The Reverend Boughton presides over this little heaven as it's unassuming and self-denying deity. As such, Glory reverently works to please him, as a worshipoer carefully preparing and offering a pleasing sacrifice, as on the evening when the Ameses visit. Her attempts to please her father fail this evening, but the language she uses in recounting it cloth her efforts with the air of a religious rite. She laments "whatever part of her father's hopes for the evening could be satisfied by fragrance and candlelight and by the food consecrated to the rituals of Boughton celebration, that part at least had been seen to"(184).

Yet, if this may have been a heaven for most of the Boughton children, it never seemed so to Jack. He has always been the problem; how to explain this unhappy child of God in the heaven created for him. Beyond the enigmatic Jack, the unchanging nature of the Boughton home is threatening to Glory. Being so mired in the past, she fears this precious and precise version of her childhood home might elicit or demand (via her desire to please its maestro, her father) previous incarnations of her own self. It seems to her as if she might re-assume her childhood self when surrounded by the surroundings of that childhood.

Unlike Jack, Glory finds many pleasures and much consolation in this well-preserved terrain from her childhood. She has fond memories of the time it seeks to capture. Glory is not somebody fleeing the past. After she moves away, she continued daily Bible reading because it helped her "remember the household she came from, to induce the unspecific memory of a comfort she had not really been conscious of until she left it behind" (102). On the first Sunday after Jack returns, Glory prepares a traditional Sunday dinner, and when "she walked in from the garden, the house had already begun to smell like Sunday. It brought tears to her eyes. That old orderliness, aloof from all disruption"(39).

Part of Glory is inclined to grant that their childhood home is gone along with her childhood. She will never be able to re-assume her childhood certainty, joy, hope and faith. In the light of such feelings, her father's carefully preserved monument to the past seems pathetic, a spiritless corpse life out of which all life has leaked out, leaving behind a sad if not appalling thing in need of burial. When Glory discovers she's inherited the house, initially she's horrified. She tells Jack, "This is a nightmare I've had a hundred times. the one where all the rest of you go off and begin your lives and I am left in an empty house.....waiting for someone to notice I'm missing and come back for me. and nobody does"(298).

At the end, the dying Boughton recognizes the impulse and folly of his project. He laments and regrets it: "'Why did I ever expect to keep anything? That isn't how life is'"(296). While he's unable to act on it, the lesson his life teaches is that we must let go and the grace with which we do so distinguishes us.

It appears a lesson lost on Glory. It is a lesson lost on the living. The house housed a holy family. A place where a number of people loved and felt loved. With the exception of Jack, everyone felt this love. That moment occurred long before the events in the novel and that state seems long vanished. Yet, it persists in memory, and in memory it prompts attempts to find it again.

Just before Jack launches back out into the world, he goes to hear another of Ames' sermons. He tells Glory "it was about idolatry, about the worship of things, on one hand the material world, in the manner of scientific rationalism, and on the other hand-chairs and tables and old purple drapes, in the manner of Boughtons and totemists"(310). Yet, despite his mockery here, despite he never felt part of the love here, Jack still invests hope that a place like his childhood home could be a place where he might potentially love and be loved in a foretaste of heaven. Glory promises him, "I won't change a thing." She realizes how important the idea of the Temple is, and she takes up the responsibility of preserving it. And, yet Jack's likening this practice to idolatry is on the mark.

It is Lila who is the voice of wisdom in this novel. I think Robinson fails Lila a bit. She's presented as a person who just knows and lives the truth but never thinks. Her pronouncements lack a finish somehow. They seem vague. But, one gathers Robinson intends them as a better way. In terms of preserving moments of divine experience, Lila knows what dying taught Boughton. She approaches the task with bounded expectations.

She tells Glory that when Ames dies she and the boy will need to move away, likely to a less pristine and simple place. She is not intent on moving the Ames' home board by board. Nor does she given in to sadness or regret. Lila and Glory go down to the river with Lila's son and his friend. They stop to watch the boys "racing leaves through an eddy between two ribs of sand. [Lila} said, 'We hope he'll remember something of it.' Then Glory had seen the place as if it were the kind of memory a woman might wish for her child"(283).