The novel is based on Operation Auca, the mission of a group of
American Christian evangelists in the mid-1950s. Their aim was to convert the Waorani, an
isolated Indigenous people living in Ecuadorian Amazonia. Five male missionaries decided to make contact
and were killed. Among evangelical
Christians, the five men were seen as martyred heroes.
The focus of the book is the wives of the missionaries, especially Marj
Saint and Betty Elliot, and Rachel Saint, the sister of the team’s pilot. We learn considerable background: how Marj and Betty met their husbands, how
Rachel came to be involved in the mission, how the women reacted to the deaths
of the men. There is also a contemporary
subplot involving Abby, the granddaughter of both Marj and Betty. Abby is not proud of her family’s legacy
because of how they “’went to someone else’s country and said to people, your
ways are wicked, our ways are good’” (31).
There is a long cast of characters so it is occasionally difficult to
remember who is married to whom. A chart
at the beginning of the book would definitely have been helpful. Fortunately, the major characters are
sufficiently developed that identification becomes easier.
Initially the women are subservient to their husbands. Women aren’t even allowed to sing aloud in
church. When the men and their wives
have a meeting to discuss making contact with the Waorani, Marj understands, “This
is not a meeting to discuss the risks and vote yes or no; this is a meeting to
brief the girls. The plan is glorious
and complete, it’s an extravagant bird in full flight” (185). The women are expected to accept the plan,
even if they disagree and think the men are being hasty. The men think only of the glory that awaits
if they succeed and give little consideration to the consequences for their
families should they fail. After the men
are killed, the women must decide for themselves if they should continue to be
involved in the mission.
What amazed me is the single-mindedness of some of the missionaries. They believe that God is behind all events
and that even the simplest of things can be God’s message which must be
interpreted. Their faith leads to a form
of blindness because events which most people would see as warnings are viewed
as positive signs from God. When God
seems to be ignoring her, one of the wives concludes that “God had a new
contract with her, the contract of silence” (331). When the missionaries are killed, Betty views
the killing of the men as “’a marvellous indication of God’s love and
purpose. It seems clear that God has
moved a step closer to redeeming the Auca’” (278).
There is an element of blindness and hubris in the missionaries’ belief
in the superiority of Christianity which is even seen in the name they give the
Waorani; they call them Auca, a pejorative name meaning “savage.” Non-Christian cultures are seen as
valueless: “They always talked of how
they would change the Indians, what they would bring to the Indians, but they
didn’t think of what the Indians would bring to them” (340). More than one person on the mission wears a “breastplate
of righteousness” (315).
Contact annihilates the Waorani and their culture. Exposure to disease leads to deaths. The tribe is restricted to a protectorate (reservation)
comprising 8 percent of Waorani land. That
land, oil companies are free to exploit so one Waorani says, “’Thirteen days of
oil for America ruined Waorani lands’” (350).
It is only after Waorani culture has been virtually destroyed that Abby
learns about “The hunting taboos that protect certain animals. The songs celebrating the bounty of the
forest. The way individuals from clans
far away are recognized by their footprints in river clay. The warfare rituals, the sharing rituals”
(372). There is such irony in a Bible
finally being translated into the Waorani language, “the fulfillment of a dream
cherished by three generations of Operation Auca families” (357), because by
then only a few elders speak the language and not many of them can read.
The author shows different approaches to Christianization. Betty, for example, asks, “Was it possible to
reach people’s souls, and turn them over to Christ, and leave the people otherwise
as they were?” and has “a lot of ideas about accommodating the gospel to native
ways” (350). Rachel, on the other hand,
is totally unbending; she is determined to break their itinerant lifestyle. She wants the Waorani to raise beef cattle so
they will give up eating wild meat: “’And
anyway, if they live in one place, the game is going to peter out pretty
shortly’” (325)!
What is amazing is that the author manages to arouse sympathy and
antipathy for both women. Betty is an
intelligent woman who questions the way Christian missions operate yet still
has “faith that terrible and even bizarre tragedies are planned and carried out
by God’” (15). Rachel is a bully who forces
the Waorani to live as she sees fit; even her nephew recognizes that the
Waorani needed protection from her (350).
Yet this same woman raised five boys while she was just a girl herself and
had her heart broken twice (130 – 131).
The flawed and layered characters are a wonderful element in the book.
The son of one of the missionaries realizes “that his family’s story
always sounds better in the US. You tell
it there and people are moved to tears” (352).
My hope is that people are indeed moved to tears but not just because
five men died; the impact of missionary zeal on the Waorani left me feeling
devastated and reflecting on the treatment our Indigenous people received.
This book is so timely, perhaps influencing people to think more about
First Nations reconciliation. I
understand why the novel won the Governor General’s Award for Fiction.
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