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Religion is a prominent theme in the novel. The Reverend is one of the few positive male figures in the novel. Though Ruth’s approach to religion is circumspect, she admires the Reverend for his consistent kindness. Moreover, he is one of the only people who does not value Matt more highly than Ruth. Thus, his behavior is consistent with her sermons on such famous beatitudes as “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God” (226).
Ruth’s relationship to religion evolves as she matures. When she is a young girl, she expects Jesus to come for Christmas, thinking to herself, “I wanted the baby Jesus to come in the worst way, with his curds and honey, choosing the good, refusing the evil” (55). Eventually, she comes to believe that Jesus is a symbol, and that “the Rev was merely telling stories that were designed to make us behave” (227). Ruth’s Aunt Sid is instrumental in Ruth’s understanding of Jesus as a myth and a symbol. Aunt Sid herself characterizes Jesus as “a celebration of life” (56).
Later into her adulthood, Ruth boldly states to the Reverend that “Jesus is a crackpot” (227). Despite her flagrant dismissal of conventional religious doctrine, Ruth exhibits a spiritualism that persists throughout the novel. She encourages the Reverend to go down to the marsh in springtime and witness the frogs’ offspring for evidence of rebirth. Ruth’s close relationship with the natural world is nearly religious in nature. A particularly transformative moment for her was when she aided the birth of a baby lamb. She admired the mother’s courage despite the obvious pain of childbirth.
Ruth compares her own experience as a mother to a religious one, though cynically. She states, “I knew Jesus wasn’t any better than our Justin” (225). Ruth also notices herself paying attention more closely in church since the birth of her son. Though she finds the Reverend’s parables inscrutable, she states that she knows Justy must be involved somehow, since she created him and made him a part of the world. In this way, her son is a catalyst for Ruth’s religious quasi-epiphany.
In the novel’s final chapter, she writes, “I’m sure Jesus has good points, too, and I wouldn’t rule out the fact that my vision just isn’t broad enough to recognize them” (330). By the end of the novel, Ruth’s relationship with religion has moved from a fascination to a rejection to a synthesis that appreciates the lessons that Jesus can offer humanity.
Nature plays a major role in the novel’s trajectory, both with respect to the change of seasons and also the cycle of life. As Honey Creek is a four-season climate with harsh winters, and because Ruth’s family at first operates, and later rents farmland, Ruth and her family’s experiences are closely tied to the land.
Some of the happiest moments of Ruth’s childhood take place in the summer, most notably when the family is eating ice cream, a portion of which lands on top of Ruth's head while Elmer scoops it. Ruth admits to wishing that she “could have stayed there at the kitchen table for about five centuries [...] just as fossils” (15). When Ruth announces to May that they are expecting a child, May gathers tulips from the freshly melted garden during the springtime, and Ruth thinks she has never been happier. As the subsequent fall arrives, and after the family celebrates Justy’s first birthday, Ruth experiences what seems to be clinical depression, and she dreams of acquiring a large sum of money and kidnapping Justy, so that they might escape together to warmer climes.
Though winter is not her favorite season, and even May resents the time of year that makes her bones feel “petrified” (199), she truly appreciates the cycle of nature, and, when she begins her full-time job at the Trim ‘N Tidy following high school, she misses leading the cows out to pasture as she used to do in autumn when she was a child. She notes that, after summer vacation, “at Trim ‘N Tidy I was back in a prison where they don’t ever let a person see the sunshine, and with the chemicals stealing down into my body” (284). Civilized (and industrialized) life does not permit her such a closeness to nature as Ruth is accustomed to.
Ruth’s relationship to nature borders on spirituality. After Ruth has introduced her mother to Ruby, and she realizes that the two are not fond of one another, she “prayed to the winter constellations that weren’t yet visible […] for their mercy” (144). For example, she tells the Reverend that the frogs’ singing in the marsh in the springtime is the best way to “hear what’s come to life, what’s reborn” (322). Ruth acknowledges that, owing to her lack of advanced education and supposed limited mental faculties, she has “no words for savory odors or the colors of the winter sky or the unexpected compulsion to sing” (5). Throughout the novel, Ruth’s narration evidences her appreciation for the great power of natural forces.
Ruth Grey’s narration captures her life’s full set of experiences from her earliest childhood memories to the present day. At the novel’s close, Ruth is about 25 years old and is expecting her second child. Thus, the novel can be squarely placed into the category of Bildungsroman or coming-of-age novel.
Nor is it the span of years represented alone that situate the novel in this way. Ruth undergoes a transformation beyond the physical or superficial ones that attend a conventional passage from childhood to adulthood. This transition is forecasted by, and itself marked by, Ruth getting to know May more intimately. Because of May’s relentlessly cold personality, much of this knowledge comes from Ruth’s Aunt Sid, who tells Ruth stories of May’s childhood. Indeed, May’s experience loving and losing her first husband Willard Jenson foreshadows Ruth’s loss of Ruby, albeit in a different fashion.
One hallmark of the transition from adolescence to adulthood is when an individual leaves their childhood acquaintances, family, and home to join the community of her husband. As suspected by Ruby’s social worker Sherry, Ruby and Ruth’s failure to find their own community in part contributes to the tragedy that unfolds in the household. When Ruth first meets Ruby and attempts to make sense of her feelings for him, she cannot fathom love happening to her. She admits that she “always put [her]self in other people’s shoes, people such as Emma Bovary or Elizabeth Bennet. I imagined I was one of them, and then love came to me” (120).
Though the transition from child to spouse is seldom an easy or straightforward one, Ruth’s marriage to Ruby is especially problematic. Ruth suspects that Aunt Sid does not approve of Ruby: “There was something about Aunt Sid, when she saw how Ruby slurped the cake off of the serving knife and danced the twist and the bump with Daisy in the kitchen, that made her look as if she thought I was lost forever” (151). Ruth’s suspicion is confirmed in the closing chapter when she finds a letter from Matt in Aunt Sid’s home in DeKalb, in which he admits to sharing Aunt Sid’s concern about the marriage.
The other major feature of Ruth’s transition from childhood to adulthood is her experience of becoming a mother herself. The birth of her first son, Justy, redeems Ruth from insignificance in the eyes of both her mother and the town. Being a mother makes Ruth feel normal and relevant. It also gives her a sense of confidence insofar as she finds parenting intuitive, at one point stating, “when you’re a mother, you know what your baby needs […] Ruby thought I was the smartest person on earth, for jiggling Justy and making him quiet down” (225).
Just as Justy redeems Ruth from otherwise toxic relationships with her husband and mother, the advent of her second child redeems Ruth from both her cynicism and physical pain following her victimization at her husband’s hands. When she finds out that her second child will live, she admits to feeling that she had “an enormous task” before her, namely, the task of figuring out who she was so that she could “start fresh” (323). As she is convalescing at Aunt Sid’s house and contemplates her aunt’s suggestion that she attend college, she admits to believing that someday she will “try out her wings” (343). Ruth’s traumatic experiences from childhood through adulthood, bolstered by her natural aptitude for motherhood, have made her a constitutionally stronger and more ambitious, open-minded, and confident individual.