The Puzzle of John Brown

Tim Stafford | posted 9/01/1998

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But the meaning of Cloudsplitterhas to be larger than that; why go back to John Brown to tell a story of an overbearing father? We have plenty of more contemporary examples. John Brown's story is fundamentally an American myth, and the tortured and unbelieving Owen, who does terrible deeds out of a misplaced and conflicted faith in his father, is a fair stand-in for modern-day America. For despite no longer believing in God, many Americans cannot stop acting with the moral passion of believers.

If Cloudsplitteris to be read as a parable, it suggests that unbelieving children become more dangerous as they pursue moral passion without faith:

I am still that same, half-cracked man, Owen Brown, lurching forward into history on the heels of his father, resolving all his private, warring emotions and conflicted passions in the larger, public war against slavery, making the miserable, inescapable violence of his temperament appear useful and principled by aiming it, not at himself, where perhaps it properly belonged, but at his father's demonized opponents. For otherwise, how would I have turned out but as a suicide?

At one point, Owen imagines the bliss of being a "Hindoo"—floating in the belief that life is an illusion,

with no stern, bearded God lording it over me, enticing me with guilt and shame and principles and duty, and making goodness an irrestistible obligation, impossible to meet, and not simply man's natural condition.

Ah, but I was born and raised a Christian, not a Hindoo! … Worse, I am a Christian without a God, a fallen man without a Savior.

The only help for Owen, it seems, is represented by the words of a black woman: "You should pray, Owen, that's what. You should pray for forgiveness, and to obtain peace of mind. You're too much alone, the way you've fallen from belief. … Only the Lord can give you what you need."

Tim Staffordis senior writer for Christianity Today.

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