but for all of the students (zero?) who will read this before the quiz, then I hope this helps.
I have about 4 quotes, all dealing with Nathan.
Rachel, 341----"Ruth May peed in her pants just because Father coughed out on the porch."
They fear their dad. Actual fear of his wrath. Nathan is a di...jerk, and this shows it clearly.
Rachel, 488 and 485----talking about Nathan, " I guess I was scared of seeing him as a crazy person. The tales got wilder and wilder as the years went by. That he'd had five wives, who all left him for example."
"He'd gotten a very widespread reputation for turning himself into a crocodile and attacking children."
The five wives being the price girls, and baptisim being the crocodile's charm to kill children, Nathan became what he was trying to avoid the most, a myth. Everything he did was in vain. Ruth May died for nothing. He went to the Congo to save, and lost his family while making a himself a scary story for the campfire. A tad ironic. Also, relating how Nathan is the government, all the wrongs he did were sort of forgotten. No one, aside from Nathan (gov.) remembers what really happened. I guess this shows the part on ignorance and how we chose to forget rather then learn from mistakes.
I think Nathan lost track of what was really important, and that's why he was such a di...jerk. He lost focus on what his message should have been, and in turn he lost his family.
ReplyDeleteI kind of liked what he became. He was portrayed as an insane person, and like you said, he didn't want to be a myth.
This book is filled with irony. The girls with their hope chests, Nathan's death and Adah's Verse for being slow, and the most innocent of the Price family being killed. The list goes on and on.
It seemed that towards the end of Exodus, the girls really didn't care about the harsh things he did as much as Orleanna did, further supporting the theory of Orleanna as Africa. If Nathan is America, he was doing to terrible things to his Africa--taking advantage of her hospitality and her resources. He didn't acknowledge Orleanna for anything she did for him--not for the cooking, taking care of the kids, any of it. And in the end, everyone started to forget about what he did, except Orleanna, much like our government has avoided telling us about the reality of things so that we will forget how terrible we were to Africa, and Africa can't forget it.
I think the message in Exodus was a very good one, but it was a rather slow read, until I got to the part about Nathan dying.
I really like your insights, if i would have seen this before the quiz i think it could have been really helpful to get some other perspectives.. maybe next time ill look!
ReplyDeleteI love the comparison of Nathan to the government! I've thought about that a couple times but seeing it laid out like this makes it really interesting and easy to understand!
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