Literary

In the short story Redemption by John Gardener the theme of religion play a huge role in that a boy and his family who are very religious suffer a huge tragedy and must find their own way to cope with their misfortune; each person reacts differently toward their God after this accident. The main character, Jack, completely turns away from his religion and bury’s himself in the grief of his brother. His father, religious and kind man, blames God for his pain and what happened and he rebels against God and does things completely against his character . Eventually he breaks down and discovers that no matter how hard he tried he could not continue to avoid God. He truly has unconditional faith and accepts that he cannot live his life without his faith. His mother, extremely caring but emotional, is a wreck but seems to maintain her faith and even rely on it more. Jack’s little sister who is holding on to maintaining her innocence, is insisting on God and praying a lot because she needs to know that God had a reason and that he is still there. Through playing the French horn and meeting his teacher who had also been through a very big tragedy and found redemption through music, Jack realizes that God had been there the whole time and that whatever he had put him through he took him through. The French horn was his way out and he was able to finally forgive himself and move on with a new found faith. This story suggests that religion requires an enormous amount of faith and that one must be patient and allow themselves to trust and deal with things over time, and not to immediately lose faith after tragedy but to trust that what you have invested your faith in will come through. Having read this short story and analyzing the role of religion in it rather than just reading about religion, it adds to the definition in that people need to be able to make their own choice in their own time, one can force you. “Jack his sister said, did you want to say grace? Not really, he said and he glanced at her. He saw her face in alarm, her mouth slightly opened, her eyes wide, growing wider, and though he did not know why, his heart gave a jump. I already said it, he mumbled. Just not out loud. Oh, she said then smiled.” His sister having turned to God after such a tragedy wanted so much for him to do the same because it was helping to heal her and she knew he needed healing. He needed to go back to trusting his religion on his own terms and time, when people need their religion others must be tolerant and allow them to do it for themselves, but in return they must be willing to be tolerant of what they place their faith in and give it time to act as well. Every type of religion; judaism, christianity, budhism, etc calls for some sort of trust in what you believe, when misfortunes happen people blame it on what they beleive in just as they worship when something great happens to thank who or what they believe in. If one feels strongly enough about a religion to live their life by it, than they should be able to stick with it not only through the good part of life but the dark ones as well.