In A Jest of God by Margaret Laurence, the reader is introduced to a small town school teacher, Rachel. Rachel is 34 years old and a single female taking care of her mother after her father’s death. Through Rachel’s eyes the reader is shown her thoughts, desires and struggles. One side of Rachel that is seen in this novel is the struggle with death and her father; Rachel approaches death as way out of her life, an escape from the “claustrophobic life” (214) trapping herself from being the person she wants to be.
Before the novel even begins we are shown a glimpse of how Rachel approaches her spiritual life and how death is an integral part of the way she thinks: “I was swallowed one time deep in the dark” (5). This quote from Carl Sandburg’s Losers foreshadows the struggle which haunts Rachel from a child to the point in her life when she finally gets a grasp on death. Her life through her eyes seems boring almost unbearable at times and her fantasy of escape comes in the form......
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Approximate Word Count: 1076
Approximate Pages: 5 (260 words per double-spaced page) |