God, religion, and faith are recurring themes in the book. Look, for instance, at the letter Garnett writes Nannie discussing a passage from Genesis (186). For your post, think about how God or religion or a notion of a divine being is represented in the text. Where is God/divinity/faith in nature? What is the connection? Point to specific passages and pages as evidence for your claims.
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I think it is great that Genesis and the idea that humans are the keepers of the earth are in this novel, Prodigal Summer, by Barbara Kingsolver. This is a question that has been asked for many years, since people began to question the Bible and whether or not to take it literally. I look at it this way, Garnett is an old fashioned man who had worked teaching farming methods for twenty years. He knows what he is talking about and has spent most of his life on the subject. I can also infer that he is a religious man who has studied the Bible by his excerpts from Genesis and the fact that he is also a crotchety old man. The Bible is in severe disagreement with natural science in many respects but one is fact is known. Humans can control a lot more than any other animal can. We are the only species that can cause major problems and we are the only species that can fix major problems. In Prodigal Summer, the role of religion is played in every aspect of the story from the field biologist, to the city girl stuck on a farm, but it is mostly played by these two arguing old people.
My perception on the quote from Genesis is that because God trusted man with his creations, it is our responsibility as a human race to be not just the controllers of the Earth, but as the protectors. I think that a lot of people interpret this passage in that they have the right to do as the please to the earth simply because they are the more powerful beings that exist. In Prodigal Summer, as Deana was tracking the animal prints in the beginning, I found it similar to the saying, "there's always someone watching", referring to God watching over you. Deana was watching over every step that the animal made, just as God, or a divine being watches over his creations. I think that a divine being, God, can always be found in nature. In my opinion, the way that tiny different aspects of nature interconnect to each other is related to God, or a divine being. For example, the way that many symbiotic relationships provide means for survival for certain organisms is a form of a miracle that occurs in nature. It may not directly be God, but it nonetheless stems from othe notion of a divine being controlling nature.
Whether it is God or not there seems to be some being involved with nature and the characters in this book. One thing that points to this is the presence of ghosts in each story. Every character seems to have some kind of ghost effecting their lives, whether a lost loved one, an extinct species, or even the ghost of someone they never knew. I find that ghosts and God in this book add that sense of the things unknown. Lusa never knew her husbands childhood, or his mother, Deanna has never seen the extinct animals that used to roam the mountain and Garnett perhaps will never know a woman's touch again. There are so many mysteries and wonder that nature holds secret. Man does not know all and he will never know all, so how does he explain these phenomenons? This makes me think of Deanna and the nature that surrounds her; The way everything relies on something else to survive makes it seem like some being has to be behind nature's design. Deanna wants nature to go on as it should with out human interference and does not seem to necessarily believe in God but Garnett sees the world as his domain as it says in the Bible. These different views on God or beings, reflect how the characters see and interact with nature.
My first reaction to questioning the connection between religion/God with nature is that I have read several poets, nature writers, as well as friends who describe being immersed in the so-called natural world creates a portal that allows them to become "closer to God/the divine". Or, maybe, is it the idea of the divine that develops the idea of nature? Thus, then God brings us closer to/defines nature rather than the other way around.
The passage in the Genesis I think is a undertake of this idea. The belief that God gave humans the gift of the earth to suit their survival blows the bubble that nature is completely to our disposal and that we are the ultimate species in favor of the divine. Life is not as easy as this, however, since we are the only organisms that have any responsibility to serving God. Garnett is not the type of person that I would get along with, rather, I could see myself as the liberal environmentalist Miss Rawley. Miss Rawley seems to see her existence as a human as having the responsibility of the earth and being the product of science. This does not mean I completely disagree with Garnett. What he reads and understands from the Bible is what many of us can only see in our obvious span of existence, which is our ultimate domination in survival. How could we say which is right: science theory or the Holy Bible? In a way, they are both science; they are both explorations of our existence in congruency to the rest of the earth. Religion and nature is a two-part story in the same book and these topics are only created and understood by humans. Kingsolver tries to represent the different ways humans may understand what nature is and how it relates to us through the circular arguments of these neighbors like we most likely encounter in our own lives.
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