Reclaiming The Faith

Reclaiming the Faith

In our current society it is established that faith is equated with a type of blind acceptance of all that the church or institution stands for. Having faith is still viewed as a wholesome characteristic, though it is more and more becoming correlated with negative connotation that is commonly attached to a thoughtless, dogmatic approach - an absolute obedience of all tenets regardless of conscious thoughts and appeals. In a similar regard, patriotism has become an exemplar of modern faith because it calls for unchallenged compliance with both the laws of the government and their unjustified actions, especially during times of war. Primarily this absolute-authority mindset was instilled within the general population because of the principle of sovereign immunity that was instituted long before the United States was even founded. While widely accepted during the beginning of this country, landmark atrocities initiated by the government, regardless of rationale, emphasized this question of immunity to the people and the court system, eventually leading to revolutionary judgments against the government. Before this, especially during the Cold War, the government fought extensively to keep a jaded population through propaganda. When we view the history of both religion and government, the ideals behind true obedience are strongest when they allow for active engagement on behalf of the citizens, permitting them to question deeply and ultimately follow their consciences. One individual, who had the tragic benefit of being involved with an example of the landmark atrocities the government inflicted, came to the realization that, no matter what obstacles one faces, obedience must first be to yourself. The author of the personal narrative The Clan of One-Breasted Women, Terry Tempest Williams, comes from a lineage of individuals that, because of governmental bomb testing during the mid-twentieth century, developed various types of cancer. Her physical ailments aside, Williams battles with vast inner-conflict, for her Mormon religion prevented her from speaking out and stating her struggle to the world. Overcome with frustration of misplaced authority, due to both her religion's suppression of ideas and governmental jargon, she finally offers her emotional pleas through a subtly persuasive narrative. By presenting only very common and well-known historical context, combined with personal examples through a narrative approach, Williams is targeting a large percentage of the population, especially women and those that lived through the events she speaks of and . Terry Tempest Williams indulges the reader with an aggregate of sympathetic narrative snippets, structural and stylistic shifts and a display of oppositional thinking, relating perspective and illustrating an alternative to blind obedience and emphasizing the need to civilly speak out against it.

Williams' work contains constant narratives of her own personal struggle against breast cancer and its effects on those dear to her, enveloping readers emotionally while, through abrupt statements, simultaneously redirecting them towards future solutions. Her account commences immediately with a declaration of the author's horrific family history: "I belong to a Clan of One-breasted Women. My mother, my grandmother, and six aunts have all had mastectomies. Seven are dead." (Williams 281). The initial strategy that Williams employs instantly evokes feelings of sympathy within readers because her purpose is more than an individual quest; her plight stems from the involvement of her entire family and is aimed at helping more than just those like her. By writing these sympathetic statistics, Williams creates a strong connection with the reader, which she will eventually mold into support, and also adds tonal direction. After quickly introducing readers to her situation, though, she draws the attention away from her specific struggle and refocuses it on the purpose by adding subtle undertones to accounts of history, such as when she concludes her background simply with "This is my family history" (281) and adds further comments on how "Cancer was part of life" (282). By not employing poetic and melodramatic language in the beginning to exploit the inhumanities of her situation, Williams motivates readers to seek deeper understanding within the paper more than their initial ideas of mere pity. Because the audience is not expecting such blunt statements and descriptions concerning her horrific past, she causes readers to understand that the concentration is not on what has happened to her in the past, but what must be done in the future. While the content of Williams' background alone establishes sobering sympathetic emotions within readers, she explicitly directs her focus in order to prepare the audience to receive a more involved perspective.

Furthering the introduced perspective of her situation, Williams constructs very specific imagery that familiarizes readers with the injustices inflicted upon her, giving them a more basic/conscious perspective and sequentially urging them to question blind acceptance of authority. She employs specific, connotative imagery to an overall minimal, though effective, degree when she describes what she has gone through. For example, in one passage Williams vividly details her experiences with cancerous patients and how she "...bathed their scarred bodies, and kept their secrets. [She] watched beautiful women become bald as Cytoxan, cisplatin, and Adriamycin were infected into their veins. [She] held their foreheads as they vomited green-black bile..." (285-286). This particular excerpt presents a sense of terrible familiarity on behalf of the author, lending credibility to her plight. When readers can actually feel her pain and share her grief, they can gain a much closer perspective of the issue. Also, it adds individualistic perspective to a people that the government has gone to great extents to dehumanize by defining as collateral, such as when the Atomic Energy Commissioner, Thomas Murray, stated that "'[the government] must not let anything interfere with this series of tests, nothing.'" (284). In the face of such grave atrocities, Williams reveals to readers her perspective, equipping them with a deeper understanding and justifying the necessity of questioning authority.

Now qualified to properly assess based on Williams' personal perspective, readers are introduced to some of the governmental jargon that she so vehemently wants to speak out against so that they can comprehend her frustrations more effectively. Though not direct quotes, Williams captures the basic overall opinions of the government when they describes how her home area is "virtually uninhabited desert terrain" (287)