Brooks, Geraldine. March. New York: Penguin Group, 2005. 304 pp. Larsa Ramsini
aegis 2007 156
In her most recently published novel, March, Geraldine Brooks tells the story of the absent father, Mr. March, from Louisa May Alcott’s classic Little Women. It is the story of a passionate, idealistic minister during the Civil War confronted with cold reality, religious hypocrisy, challenges to his strongest beliefs, as well as his cowardice and the seemingly unbearable guilt that results. March believes he is fighting for a great cause and will be able to do much good for his country and fellow man; but the road is bumpy right from the start. It is during this time that he realizes why “simple men have always had their gods dwell in the high places. For as soon as a man lets his eye drop from the heavens to the horizon, he risks setting it on some scene of desolation” (4). The war brings him to an understanding of the sharp contrast between his views of an ideal world, and the reality in which he and the rest of mankind are trapped. He recognizes the times when ones needs to be realistic in one’s dealings with the world, especially when it is an issue of life or death. In speaking to the youth ready to go off to battle, March refers to the scriptures in saying that they must know why they are going to war, and what they are fighting against. But he feels the “essential emptiness” of his words as he recognizes that “action, now, was all that mattered” (182). The war has come, according to March, because one group of people has a great ideal that it wants to see realized; and in order to win, they cannot give up on this ideal. Despite everything he has seen and gone through, March still yearns for a better future and believes it is possible through courage and determination. But March knows how important the end goal is, and truly believes that the ideal is possible, even if the reality of achieving it is monstrous. So paradoxically, in order to work toward the idealistic goal of equality, one needs to be realistic in action. In the words of his wife, March is one of the “few dreamers” who believe that one can “build a nation upon ideas such as liberty and equality” (216). The theme of the hypocrisy of religion in this novel runs along the same lines as the idealistic versus realistic view of the world, because ideally, Christianity is meant to be one thing, but when people maintain views that appear utterly opposing to Christian doctrine, this religion turns into something completely different. This novel frequently regresses back to March’s past so the reader can further understand his feelings and experiences during the war. When March intervenes in a Bible study that is going on inside a church, and asks why the money they are about to use to send the scriptures to Africa cannot be better spent by freeing the human beings being sold into slavery right outside its doors, he is rebuked with cold hostility and asked to leave. Afterward, March wonders “how the scene might have gone if the pastor had led his people of faith out from that little church to stand in that square with their Bibles raised in protest;” that is, if their Bibles were used for purposes for which they were intended, instead of being blind to reality (44). If religion is intended to help people in this
